As Ramadan draws to a close (its last day is Thursday, June 15), those who are celebrating it will be taking time to remember its greatest night, Laylat Al Qadr.  On this night, centuries ago, the prophet Mohammad is said to have received the first of the divine revelations which would eventually become the Qur'an.  Laylat Al Qadr is a night in which God (Allah) visited and manifested himself to his human creation in a way, as Muslims, see it, he had not done so before.  It is a night of revelation, a night of divine unfolding, a night in which the distant and unknowable God expressed himself in ways his human creation could understand.
     In this understanding is Laylat Al Qadr's greatest contribution to humanness.  By affirming the possibility of revelation, Laylat Al Qadr reminds us that whether we believe it or not, God speaks.  God speaks through nature, God speaks through image, and God speaks through word.  Life is the speech of God.
     How much remarkable do I therefore find the apostle John's understanding of word, which he articulated several centuries before Mohammad walked upon the earth.  Not only does God communicate himself through the written word (which Jew, Muslim, and Christian alike confirm), John observed, but he communicates himself by showing us, directly and visibly in the person of Jesus, who he most deeply is.
     John showed us that although, as does Laylat al Qadr, we do well to treasure the words of God, we come to know God most fully face to face.

     Ah, the Romantics.  Rebels to the Industrial Revolution, advocates of the senses and imagination, creators of a new picture of God.  Sliding in and out of the nineteenth century, the Romantics strove to push Western Europe past its obsession with technology and open its eyes to new possibilities of what humanity can be.  We are not mere robots of mind and materiality, they said, but creatures of the heart.

     Today, we remember the birthday of one of the most famous Romantic composers:  Robert Schumann.  Like so many of his contemporaries, Schumann died young, passing out of this world at the age of 45.  In his relatively short life, however, he composed some of the most lovely and ethereal melodies of the era.  His music was full of fantasy and images of other worlds, challenging us to dig ever more deeply into who we really are.

     Schumann tells us that, regardless of what we believe about the world, eternity, or God, we are, in our essence, beings of emotion, passion, and pathos.  We develop technologies, yes, and we appreciate what our minds can do.  Ultimately, however, we are destined to look past our mental machinations, and to contemplate why we even have such things, to ponder, wonder, and celebrate our ability to be creatures who, made in the image of God, can birth a dream.

     "Numbers," said the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras, "are the essence of all things."  Maybe you like mathematics, maybe you don't.  Maybe you do not see the presence of numbers in the structures of the universe, maybe you do not sense the ubiquity of numbers in all that we do.  Or perhaps you see numbers as the work of God in the make up of the cosmos, that the fact of numbers indicates that God has made an orderly universe.
     Without question, the universe has a sense of balance and order, a presence of symmetry, number, and function that seems to defy imagination.  And we all wonder:  how did such a perfectly tuned structure come to be?  Why did numbers, the foundation of order, the harbinger of space and time, come to be so deeply woven into the fabric of the cosmos?
     Perhaps it's too easy to say that God created it this way, and that, given all things, this was the only world he could have made.  Perhaps.  On the other hand, as any number of unbelievers have remarked, the universe could not be anything other than what it is if it is to exist.  Obviously.  Regardless, it seems that a cosmos grounded in number and, necessarily, order, is essential to our wellbeing and sentient existence.
    Hence, the bigger question is this:  without trapping ourselves in logical circularity, how do we explain the fact of this numbered and orderly existence?
     Have a great day.

     "The mountains are calling me," said the American naturalist John Muir, "and I must go."  As we little human beings wander about this planet, living out our lives, responding to circumstances, making choices, devising goals, and constructing visions, we all wonder:  where, really, are we going?  To what are we really being called?


     In the big picture, we may never know.  We live with what is before us.  We may feel called, we may feel compelled.  Or we may feel as if we have never had a choice in what happens in our lives.  To an extent, none of us really does:  as Martin Heidegger was fond of saying, we are "thrown" into this world:  not a single one of us could make ourselves be here.
     So yes, listen to your call.  In an empty world, it's all you have.  Or better, listen to the rhythms out of which this call, if it is to hold any meaning, any meaning at all, must inevitably come:  the presence of God.

     Asylum?  Across the world, nations are wrestling with the question of asylum.  How do we decide, if we even must decide, to whom we will grant asylum into our country?  It's a very complicated issue.  On the one hand, most asylum seekers have patently legitimate grounds for requesting protection.  For instance, what would you say to your child if she came home one day and told you that the local gang informed her that unless she joined tomorrow, she would be killed?  Or if you were a girl who faced genital cutting?  What if you were caught in the middle of a war, your home completely and utterly destroyed, and no end in sight?
     On the other hand come rejoinders like, "We can't help everyone," "That is their lot and we cannot change it," "They're really trying to slip in and hurt us," and a host of other, dare I say, less than fully adequate excuses.  Most Western nations are far wealthier than the rest of the world.  Surely, we can bend our arcs of justice (to borrow a phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr.) to accommodate these situations.  It does not do to say that the law is just, that the law restricts us, and that therefore to deny asylum is to be just.  That's simply spinning our wheels.
     Maybe this is why the Hebrew prophets said repeatedly that God is more concerned that we make the core of justice mercy, not ritual, that we use our minds and our hearts to effect justice and not our minds only.
     Of what use is a law if it does not take into account the humanity of the heart?

     A few days ago, in America anyway, many of us celebrated Memorial Day.  In addition to the many barbecues and gatherings this holiday spawns, numerous displays of patriotism, even, dare I say, jingoism manifest themselves among the American populace.  Lots of flags, lots of parades, lots of honoring of veterans.

Arlington Cemetery

     Although we may differ on what justifies sending troops into combat, and though we may debate how a war should be fought, we can agree, I think, to be grateful for those who, whether through conscription or voluntarism, put themselves on the line for people, people like you and me, people they may never meet or know, for causes both clear and ambiguous.
     The price, however, is high.  Military cemeteries around the world testify to this amply.  It's tragic and unspeakably sad.  So many lost lives.  And this does not include the even more numerous civilians who, through no fault of their own, are trapped and die in the middle of military conflict.
     Most of us want peace.  Peace in our families, peace in our nations, peace in the world, and peace in our hearts.  Although some wars might seem necessary, they are never uniformly good.  War will not bring peace.  It will only bring more war.
     As countless religions attest, we do not grow by seeking our own welfare but that of others.  Over and above it all, we are called to seek the common good and not solely our own.

     As many of us know, tis the season for graduations.  Across the country and the rest of the world as well, thousands and millions of students are graduating from the institutions in which they have spent, depending on their program, two, four, even ten years.  It's a big moment.

     And with these graduations come the speakers.  Some are famous, some are not.  Regardless, the themes remain the same:  do good, set goals, embrace challenge, take hold of what is before you, change the world.  And why not?  These graduates are poised to step into new lives, equipped, they--and we--hope, to make a difference on the planet.
     What about humility?  In a book I wrote a number of years ago (Thinking about God:  Reflections on a Considered Life), I noted that humility is, basically, a sense of place.  Amidst the commemorative bacchanalia and institutional glory, what will matter most in these times is the degree to which these graduates recognize their place in the world, that they are ultimately no different than anyone else.  Whether they are grandly inspired or driven, they remain people who are inherently human, inseparably connected to all things.
    And God.  We are drops in a vast ocean of humanity, an ocean in an even vaster cosmos, a cosmos in an even vaster, indeed, infinite, God.  We cannot escape the marvel--and insignificance--of our place.
     Change yourself, graduates, change the world.  And find your truest place:  step into God.