Our era of world-history is like every other. Which is a bland truism, of course. And every day of our experience is fleeting, another bland truism. Much more to the truistic essence, however, is the ancient voice of Ecclesiastes 1:9 – “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” In the language of the streets and of Mark Twain and even, perhaps, of Arnold Toynbee: “One damned thing after another.” Such, it’s often announced, are the ways of our world, from the galaxies to the electrons and in between.
I mused about such things this past Lent as I sat savoring some mushroom soup with my dear wife, Laurel, at a small restaurant overlooking the Boston Common. We had just heard an exquisite performance of Bach’s Suite Number Three in C major, for cello. It was lucidly performed in my favorite holy getaway in the whole world, the towering Lindsey Chapel of Emmanuel Church near Boston Common, a chapel that has some of the most beautiful stained-glass windows on it east wall – all of them of women – that I have ever seen (https://www.emmanuelboston.org/mission/history/history-of-lindsey-chapel/windows/). The chapel was commissioned in memory of a husband and wife who died in the 1915 Lusitania sinking.
Questioning and questing. One damned thing after another? Two promising lives drown at sea? The ravages of two world wars? Do such experiences define us humans as a species as we inhabit this tiny spec of cosmic dust in a universe of immense proportions? Or is what it means to be human more truthfully narrated by the stories of countless female saints, whose lives have been claimed by the vision of a crucified and risen Savior?
Was it I who was dreaming such dreams and seeing such visions as I savored my mushroom soup? Was it I who was hearing the Bach all over again deep in my soul as I later oh so cautiously pulled into the heavy traffic on Storrow Drive? Was it I who was savoring such precious moments? Me who, like everyone else, lives in that world of one damned thing after another?
Questioning and questing. Who am I? Who are you?
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