Many centuries ago, Anselm, the Catholic prelate who served as the archbishop of Canterbury in eleventh century England, remarked that, "He who has not experienced will not understand."  Anselm was referring to the process of spiritual discernment, that in terms of spiritual matters, often we will not understand them until we either experience them, believe in them, or both.  This explains, in part, why the religious among us may meet with looks of, depending on to whom they are talking, bemusement, annoyance, befuddlement, or outright anger when they present matters of faith.  Those who have not found what the religious have found frequently have no categories for grasping what they are saying.  To them, it's nonsense.  In addition, too often those of faith will tell those who are not that the reason they cannot understand matters of faith is that, "You have to believe," or "You just don't understand."
     To a point, this is true.  If one does not believe in a religious doctrine, that doctrine may indeed appear to be lunacy.  Or if one has not "experienced" a religion, talk of such experience will seem silly, even crazy.  This leads to two possibilities.  One, there are certain religious experiences which people will not understand unless they, too, believe in the possibility and factuality of such experiences.  Two, those who experience such things are simply deluded by what is no more than a psychological phenomenon.  There is no real religious "experience" to be had.  It's difficult to find a middle ground:  either one "sees," or one does not.
     Herein lies the final challenge--and paradox--of faith.  To believe, one needs faith.  But to have faith, one needs to believe faith is viable.  And to believe faith is viable is to acknowledge that there is something, something as real as the sunshine, to which that faith points.  Yet to do this is to have faith as well.  Either way, faith is difficult.
     Unfortunately, however, faith is the only way to really experience--and believe.

     In his classic novel Descent into Hell, the British writer Charles Williams (a contemporary of C. S. Lewis and Lord of the Rings creator J. R. R. Tolkien), observes that, "But if the past still lives in its own present beside our present, then the momentary later inhabitants [of the world] were surrounded by a later universe."
     It's an intriguing thought.  Although the past is no longer happening physically, it is still here, living still, embedded in our memory, very much alive and present, but oddly, no longer present or palpably with us.  We walk in a funny tangle of past, present past, and past past, an undulating and often aphonic web of experiences on which we are constantly building, but which we no longer see, experiences that shape but experiences which no longer exist.  Yet they remain.
     Given Williams's commitment to the existence of the spiritual world, we might view this remark as a conclusion about what is known and what is not.  While we may, through various texts and experiences, "know" (or at least think we do) about the spiritual world, we usually do not see it.  But if it is there, it is living in its "own present" besides our own, a present with a past and present of its own, a present that surrounds and penetrates all other presents as a kind of permanently living past and present, a present that explains all others.  Into it all the pasts goes, and into it all the pasts finds meaning.
     And, the story continues, we all are (or one day will be) surrounded by a "later" universe.  In the end, a forever present will reign.

     Older than the flood?  A tablet recently announced by its finder, Irving Finkel of the British Museum, and which is alleged to predate the writings of ancient Babylon as well as the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) has stirred enormous interest among archaeologists and scholars who study such things.  Why?  It contains, as translated, an account of a flood, along with specific instructions on building an ark to survive in it.  Hence, what we seem to have is a flood account which was written before every other one, even the most famous of all, the one in the Hebrew Bible (remember Noah and his three sons, as the story is presented in Genesis 6 - 9?).
     That we have a flood account that predates the story of Noah is nothing new.  Some fragments of The Epic of Gilgamesh, a fascinating tale of adventure and ruminations on mortality which also contains an account of a flood, date from the close of the third millennium B.C., well before Abraham even entered Canaan, and several centuries before the Hebrews began to compose their scriptures.  Moreover, it's no secret that many cultures around the globe have stories of a great flood buried in their respective legends and mythologies.
     So what can we learn from this discovery?  Regardless of how we might feel about the intentionality, historicity, or accuracy of a flood, global or localized, we can nonetheless conclude that the Hebrew account, one among many, is indeed very much a work of its time.  It reflects life in the second millennium B.C. and not that of the first century A.D.  It concords with the culture it describes.  It's consistent with its genre, it's true to its form.  It's religious, yes, but it's religion in history.  And in point of fact, unless religion comes out of history, it's no religion at all.
     God tends to speak to us as we are, beings in space and time and, in particular, he tends to speak to those who are looking for him most, in history, in space, and in time.  He is a God for us.

     Maybe we really do spin our wheels more than we think.  Snowshoeing through a forest the other day, I chanced upon a rather large and sturdy looking nest about twenty feet off the ground, clinging to a set of branches.  Marvelous, I thought, just marvelous.  This nest was not made with concrete or metal, not held together with synthetic glue.  It was assembled using purely natural materials, the detritus of the forest, the products of the world out of which it came.  It was not built according to a blueprint, it was not designed in the proverbial smoke-filled room.  Many springs ago, a bird, perhaps a couple of birds built this nest.  They likely didn't think much about it; they sensed a need and immediately set about to meet it.  And they didn't build this nest to collapse or break down.  They built it for the ages.
     Do we build for the ages?  Year after year, teams of scientists research to identify the longest lasting material, the strongest substance, the sturdiest protection for our goods and possessions.  They never stop, either.  People are constantly looking for the next best thing, the next best thing that will satisfy their desires for shelter and protection.  What is good this year may not be good the next.
     Not so for the birds.  Year after year, they are satisfied with what they've always done, with what they've always used.  They need nothing more.  The present is enough.  Perhaps this is why Jesus remarked about the birds that, "Even Solomon [one of the great kings of Israel] in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these [meaning birds]."
     Sometimes what is already here or what has always been rather than what will come next is the best thing.  Past, present, and future, it's all here. Although God dearly wants us to dream and live out, in space and time, the life he has given us, he also wants us to understand that, every night and every day, what is most important is that he has always been.  For it is from God's eternality that everything else comes, today, tomorrow, and all days to come.  In it we start, and in it we end.
     As the Greek philosopher Parmenides remarked, "What is, is.  What is not, is not."  Indeed.  What is there is never what's not.

     Today, for those of us who follow such things, is the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.  To this day, people the world over continue to be astonished by the immense creativity and wonder of this Austrian's music.  Fluent in all genres of classical music, Mozart, though he, sadly, died at the tender age of 34, produced an array of musical expressions that most musicologists agree is unmatched.  As a contemporary said of him, "He was like an angel sent to us for a season, only to return to heaven again."  Most of us can only stand mute and marvel at Mozart's immense ability.  How could one person write works of such extraordinary beauty?
     Let's consider a verse from the first chapter of Genesis.  "And God created man [man and woman] in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created him" (Genesis 1:26).  The God who created the universe with all its immense complexity and wonder is the same God who created, with equal wonder, every human being.  For this reason, every person who has ever been born and walked through the history of this planet has the potential to duplicate and express, albeit in finite (yet often, in the case of Mozart, remarkable) form, the creativity that birthed the cosmos.
     Rightly do we crater and weep at the beauty of Mozart's compositions; they are works of unsurpassed wonder.  Yet rightly do we marvel equally at God, the personal infinite God who made and fashioned this artist--with all his prodigious talents--and enabled him to be and become who and what he is.
      In truth, where else could have creativity come from?
     

     I read recently that as of January 15, the winter snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California is only twenty percent of its normal amount.  It's a shocking statistic, really, that a mountain range whose copious snows in past times have trapped and intimidated countless people (for example, the Donner Party) is now reduced to a semblance of its once mighty self.  Even a mountain range is not invulnerable to the vagaries of natural circumstance.
     In my first summer in the Sierra (still after all these years my favorite mountain range), many decades ago, I was astonished at the amount of water that filled its lakes, tumbled down its waterfalls, and flowed through its streams.  It seemed endless.  Week after week, month after month, it remained as strong as it was when I began.  Its abundance seemed without end.
     Although next year's snowpack could be much heavier, this year's paucity should remind us that abundance is a fleeting thing.  Life overflows with abundance, yet it can also produce profound privation.  If we root ourselves in what life has to offer us and only what life has to offer us, we may eventually find that it is an insufficient tether for our needs and longings.  Not that life is not wonderful, for it is, but that life is only as powerful as it is and no more.  It's not inexhaustible.
     The good news, however, is that its author is not.

     We are such little people.  Watching the birds at our feeder the other day, I marveled at how those little creatures are able to keep warm in temperatures that drive most of us inside for months.  Seemingly indifferent to the wind and falling snow, they flit about the feeder, packing seed after seed into their tiny stomachs.  Below them, scurrying about the ground, the squirrels ply their trade, burrowing into the snow, looking for any crumb or morsel they can find.  Sometimes they eat it on the spot; other times they grab it in their teeth and ramble away to their drays above the forest.
      Or when I see the Canada geese winging their way across the land, happily strutting through the snow, poking their beaks at the cold, I realize anew why the very best sleeping bags are filled with goose down.  What the geese probably don't think about we study intensively, seeking ways to use it to exercise and participate in our longings for things wild.  We who are supposedly the most intelligent animals must in the end use those who are supposedly not as smart as we to go places where we do not normally go, to step outside our everyday to find adventure.  We are dependent upon creatures much small than we, creatures who are not independently aware of their existence.
     How ironic that the most mighty must learn from the littlest among them.  It's the beauty of a world not made by those living in it, a world that whether one believes it was created by God or not, is a world that were we to design it, we would likely never do so in quite this way.
     We are little people of great creativity yet finite imagination.  Happily, we are not alone.