I guess this is a big month for musician birthdays.  The 27th was Mozart's, and the 31st is Schubert's.  Not as well known as Mozart and writing in a different era of European idea and thought, Franz Schubert was nonetheless one of the most remarkable musicians in Western history.  Immensely productive and profoundly creative despite passing away, perhaps from typhoid fever, though no one is totally certain, at the age of 31, Schubert is known for writing some of the most ethereal and moving melodies of all time.  Listening to his music, one feels carried away, transported to another realm, lifted above what is earthly and material.  It's an intimation of transcendence.

     But that's what music does.  If music only told us what we already know, we probably wouldn't get as much out of it as we do.  We do not need to be reminded of what is normal.  We want to think about what is beyond normal, what breaks the normal down, what splits the obvious apart.  We want to know what we, at the moment, cannot.
     Music offers windows, music opens doors.  Happily, we often do not see these windows and doors until we have stepped out of what we know.  But isn't this how we ought to live?  Descending into the darkest recesses of his soul, Schubert talks to us about the deepest mysteries of existence, how we walk in a wisp, a gossamer veil stretched out between us and the other side of time.  He romanced eternity.
     As do we all.  Every day is a balance, an edge perched on the borders of presence and absence, a thin line of reality and ultimate destiny.
     Thanks, Franz Schubert, even if you didn't intend to do so, for showing us that life is more than life itself.

     Have you heard of the baby and the 5,000?  It is an old ethical dilemma.  You're in a concentration camp.  One morning the commandant of the camp comes to you and says, "Here in my hands I'm holding a new born baby.  To your right is a crowd of 5,000 adults. If you tell me to let the baby live, I'll slaughter every one of those 5,000 adults.  But if you tell me to kill the baby, I'll spare the lives of every one of those 5,000 adults."
     This dilemma is asking us to consider the basis of our ethics.  Do we make ethical choices, not on the basis of an unchanging moral foundation, but simply on the basis of their effects? Or do we make our ethical choices on the basis of an unchanging moral foundation, regardless of effect?
     I'll leave you to decide what you would do.  I mention this as I look at the hostage situation with which the nation of Jordan is currently having to deal.  If the country frees a known suicide bomber, ISIS will let its hostage, a solider in Jordan's army, go free.  If not, this soldier will be executed, likely by decapitation.  If the suicide bomber is set free, however, Jordan could be opening the door for additional violence to its citizens. Yet if it does not set this person free, a wife will lose her beloved husband forever--and ISIS may continue to terrorize Jordan anyway.
     What do do?  I pray for the leadership of Jordan, that it will have wisdom in making its choice.  Whose life/lives are more important?  Yes, every life matters to God, and yes, every wife deserves to have her husband, and yes, no nation should be subject to more violence.  But is the greater good the only consideration?  Or are there other facets of the issue?  It's very complicated.
     As is life.  God exists, yes.  Nonetheless, given this fact, how are we to discern how we are to exist?
     In truth, if God did not exist, we would not need to.  The human being would be no challenge at all:  dust to dust, and nothing more.
     

     If we believe that God is there, how do we convince people who do not believe that he is?
     It's an age old question, one which has occupied many, many individuals through human history, and spawned thousands upon thousands of books.  Year after year, century after century, people write about various keys they believe they have found to unlock the door of unbelief.
     Most of these keys ring true.  But there's more to the picture than that.  The other night, I sat in on an apologetics seminar that had been designed specifically for unbelievers.  I heard mention of humanity's universal and perennial quest for meaning, the enduring need for a transcendent point in this life to make full sense of its complexities, and the deeply felt emotional--and spiritual--need to connect with something larger in one's life.
     Though I couldn't argue with most of the points being made, I thought also of two friends of mine, both of whom attend my atheist discussion group, who had decided to come to this seminar.  They wanted, they told me, to ask difficult questions and get reasonable and solid answers to them.  They wanted to engage believers.
     And they did.  As I observed some of the exchanges, however, I realized, and not for the first time, that such things will be decided ultimately not intellectually but rather by emotion and will.  Massive amounts of information and argumentation mean little unless those listening reach a point where they are willing to listen to them not just as a mental exercise but as a work of their heart.  God's not a being of mind alone, nor does he speak into our intellect only.  Ultimately, he speaks to our heart.  Case in point, Jesus didn't appeal to his audience's mind as much as he did their heart.  We are profoundly emotional beings. Although we believe in our reason, we almost always, as many have pointed out, employ it on a foundation of sentiment and emotion.  Our reason doesn't stand alone.
     In other words, what about belief speaks not to your mind, intellect, or even conviction and dogma, but to you?  After all, you are the only you.
     And God is the only God.
  

     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.
      As he does for all of us, we who are gifted beyond measure, we who are made to create in unabashed wonder.
     Enjoy and appreciate the people--all people--whom God has made.
     Thank you, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

     Can we know too much?  Looking at our cat the other day, sleeping peacefully, tucked into a blanket on the sofa, seemingly without a care in the world, I thought how simple her life is.  She knows little, yes, but she doesn't need to.  She is a cat.  And she doesn't even know that!
     In this present age, often dubbed the information age, an age in which so many of us have become so dependent upon and often worshipful of knowledge--of all kinds--we rarely stop to think whether we really need all the information we are receiving.  Maybe we do, maybe we don't.  But how do we know?  As the biblical writer opined many centuries ago, "In increasing knowledge is increasing pain."  How many of us have heard the phrase, "Ignorance is bliss?"  
     In many cases, this is true.  In many instances, we're better off not knowing.  In others, we of course are well served to know.  Yet however much we know, we must be prepared to deal with it in a responsible way.  Knowledge is often life changing, and life ending as well.  We want to know, yes, but we should know that the more we know, the more we do not and, significantly, the less mystery we have in our lives.
     Before Adam and Eve ate the "fruit," they did not know sin.  They had not tasted of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Now they, and all of us with them, do.  Are we better off?
     As finite beings in a finite world, yet a world created and pervaded by an infinite God, we should expect, even welcome mystery.  It's a inevitable part of our experience and being.  Sometimes we should welcome not knowing.  Sometimes we should welcome the not seeing all.
     In truth, if there were no mystery in the cosmos, we would likely not be.  Not only is the impersonal incomprehensible, but it is impossibly suited to birth mystery.  It is thoroughly opaque.
     Only divinity opens a door.

     From grizzlies last week to wolves this week . . . have you seen a wolf in the wild?  I have, many times, and am grateful for it.  Many of us know about the controversy that wolves are stirring in some parts of the West.  Some people love them, others hate them. Recently, however, scientists detected a most extraordinary thing:  a wolf sighting in California.  From Wyoming to Idaho to Washington to Oregon to California, this enterprising canine traveled in search of a mate.  Happily, he found one, and is now the leader of a new wolf pack.
     Life really does go on.  Despite everything that some of us might do to suppress it, life, of all kinds, goes on.  We love our lives, we love our world.  I hope we love our God. I also hope that we humans find comity between us and the other animals, predators in particular.  We are not the only beings on this planet.  When God commanded Adam and Eve to "rule" the earth, he was not talking about the rule of harsh and absolute monarchy. He wasn't promoting dictatorial human hegemony.  He was talking about the rule, also enshrined  in many a Native American saying, that people are to care for the planet for the "seventh" generation [and more] to come.
     Historically, many people have turned away from Christianity because they perceived, correctly, that too many Christians have promoted the destruction of the planet in the name of a misinterpreted call to human dominion.  In truth, God called Adam and Eve to cultivate and tend the earth, to contribute to its continuance and sustenance, to leave it in reasonable shape and form for those who would follow them.  After all, interplanetary exploration notwithstanding, it's the only planet we will ever have--and the only one that God will, in this life, give us.
     Why should we destroy what God has made?

     Wanting a break from writing the other day, I  walked into the den and turned on the television to one of the National Football League playoff games.  I rarely watch these things, but I watched this game, a contest between the Patriots of New England and the Baltimore Ravens, for fifteen or twenty minutes.  Over and over again, massively strong men were throwing themselves against each other, seeking some level of advantage, some opening in defenses, some way to make a gain.
     Countless commentators have opined about the similarities between these games and the gladiator games of ancient Rome.  Maybe they're right.  From another standpoint, however, these incredibly conditioned men are a picture of greatness as well as vagary. We may not agree with much of what the NFL does, we may not agree that football is worth watching, we may not agree that these men are proper representations of the human species.  Yet we can agree that those who play the sport and those who watch it are merely one more portrait of the timelessness of human futility:  here today, gone tomorrow.  Magnificent, yet fleeting.
     Ecclesiastes observes that, "Every skill which a person develops is the result of rivalry between him and his neighbors."  Though we are called to develop ourselves to the most we can be, we also remember that in a broken world, unless we commit our skills to a higher purpose, we're simply responding to the tenor of the times:  it's all about me. We're only contributing to the endlessly grinding wheels of human finitude and folly.
     Enjoy the games.