We Must Create Meaning While leading a group about grief, I mentioned that, as part of the process of moving on, “we must create a sense of meaning.” I meant this in two ways. First, we must make sense of what happened. Was God involved? If so, how? What does the event tell us about fairness, and how important it is that life be fair? Is someone to blame? Do we need to forgive that person, or do we need to forgive ourselves? Do we want to forgive, or will doing so betray our values? Is there something we can learn from our loss, or was it a random act…
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A Time for Everything
All is Vanity “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Eccl 3:1 NRSV). [1] These words start the third chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes. They were written by an anonymous Qoheleth. This Hebrew word is not a name, but a title. It means preacher or teacher or someone who speaks to an assembly of people. And the very first thing we hear from him is, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). Qoheleth repeats this phrase throughout the book and expands upon it, giving many examples to show that life is meaningless. The work we do…
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Land Iguanas and the Illusion of Control
Land Iguanas and the Prickly-Pear Land iguanas on the Galapagos Islands eat centipedes and carrion, but they prefer prickly-pear fruit. Unlike their marine cousins, they can’t climb the cactus, so they stand beneath the sprawling limbs and gaze up at the pears, waiting for one to ripen and fall to the ground. This can take hours or days, yet through it all, the creature waits. [1] I first learned about this startling reptile from one of our URC members who shared his experience of seeing them sit unmoving for days at a time. From reading about the reptiles, I learned that the creatures take breaks to catch insects and copulate,…
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Simplicity, Thanksgiving, and Gratitude
Life is a Struggle The other day I spoke with a woman who, for the last six months, has been on light duty at her job. When she first stopped working at a position that required almost constant data entry into a computer, her elbows were so inflamed with tendinitis she had to cradle her tea cup in both hands in order to lift it to her lips so she could take a sip. Although her forearm muscles have strengthened and the discomfort has lessened, she still can’t type on a keyboard. Using a mouse brings her stabbing pain. Voice-activated technology is so cumbersome, is it pretty much useless to…
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In Faithfulness Is the Salvation of the World
Faithfulness and Lamplighters What does it mean to be faithful? Does it mean always telling the truth to the people you love? Is it being monogamous? Perhaps it means obeying God. Can you be faithful to strangers? What about co-workers or employers? In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, a lamplighter is faithful to his orders. Every evening at sunset, he uses a torch to light a flame lantern. In the morning, at sunrise, he blows it out. The job started out pretty good, except that over the years, the revolutions of his tiny planet sped up until now a day lasts only one minute. This means the lamplighter can…
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Meaning and the Fruits of Our Labor
What Is the Fruit of Our Labor? In her poignant song, “Mercy Now,” Mary Gauthier writes, about her father, that the “fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground.” The image haunts me. Since it’s meant to be experienced, poetry loses something when we try to explain it, and yet I can’t help but wonder what this means. Is Gauthier saying that all the work he’s done over the years made no difference, that what he built has fallen apart? I think of an apple tree in a neighbor’s yard behind our house. Probably a hundred years old, the tree stands about 30′ tall, loaded with little,…
