TOO MUCH TO DENY, TOO LITTLE TO BE SURE

I think it was the philosopher Blaise Pascal who observed about God that there is too much that we can know about God to deny God's existence, but too little that we know about God to be sure enough to believe. If this is true, and I believe it is, then there is a reason why we all have doubts every now and then.

We can and we do look around and see what we believe are positive proofs, proofs, of God's existence. Someone greater than any one of us individually and all of us collectively had to be responsible for the created universe, we conclude. It just did not come about after one colossal big bang, no matter how big the bang, nor could it. The universe is too orderly for everything to be so ordered and still be so coincidental. It seems so obvious.

           

But we cannot be sure because we cannot understand. Oh, we can understand that God did it, that God holds it all together. But it is the "how" of God that leaves room for doubt. For doubt arises in minds that cannot understand but yet demand understanding. The more we want to know about God, the greater the chance that we will doubt God's existence. The opposite is just as true.

           

Does that mean it would be best for us to stop asking questions, faith questions? Probably. The only problem is we can't. Our hearts may want to rest in God, as St. Augustine prayed, but our minds never rest. The unquestioning heart says that God loves me. But when bad things happen to me or to my loved ones, my mind asks how could a loving God do this?

           

We do not act this way only with God, however. We do so with one another. Our hearts say that a person loves us. Our minds may wonder if that person really does after what that person just said or did to us. There is too much about our relationship with others that prove our mutual love, but sometimes not enough to hint that the love might not be total or reciprocal.

           

Doubt will never go away given our inability to know or understand everything and everyone. We do not even understand ourselves, not really. We ask ourselves why we did this or where that thought came from or how we could say something like that. The truth is, if we knew the answer to even those questions, we would be God. That fact that we do not proves we are not. But nothing proves God's existence. So we believe, so we are left only with belief.

           

The difference between a believer and one who refuses to believe is simply that. A believer chooses to live a life of faith even those whose minds are full of doubt. Those who do not believe in God refuse to do so because they seemingly cannot live with doubt God’s existence.

           

Who has the easier road to travel? Does it really matter? Or does what really matter is that we who believe live fully into our belief?

CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS UNAWARES

It would be easy to wax eloquent about how our society had made Christmas a Civil holiday rather than a Christian holyday. Many of my clergy colleagues have done so year after year. It would be even easier to moan and groan about the commercialization of this season. But if the truth be told, it would be a waste of breath and an even greater waste of words to do so.

I will grant that many of my neighbors probably, probably, because I have no way of knowing unless I ask them personally -- which I will not do -- do not even think about Jesus on Christmas. Jesus may be the last thought on their minds when they purchase and/or exchange presents. They may even have a crèche somewhere among all the decorations, but that is still no reason to believe that Jesus has any real meaning in whatever it is they do at this time of year.

           

Oh, they are certainly aware, or at least I hope they are, that Jesus is the real reason for the season, but he is not the reason why they are personally celebrating, giving and receiving presents or gathering family around the dinner table or decorating the house with a Christmas tree and lights and all the rest. You should see how hey decorate the outside of their homes! Their reasoning, I suspect, why they do all that and even more is that it is Christmas the Holiday.

           

Yet, the holiday and the holyday are so intertwined that one cannot celebrate the one without celebrating the other. I love holydays. Holydays are always holidays, always, days when we pause to remember and celebrate the holy, the good, the Godly. They are a pause within the ordinary. They are the extra added to the ordinary, the extraordinary, even the out of the ordinary. That is why they are special.

           

And holidays are holydays, but not always. If we do on holidays what we always do every other day, then there is nothing special about the day, at least for us. But when we take the holiday and celebrate it, even if our celebration is not in keeping with the real spirit of the holiday, it is still a holyday. How one keeps holy the holiday of Christmas --   for Christmas is both: it is, again, a civil holiday and a Christian holyday -- is almost beside the point. The point is that when we keep the holiday, we make it holy.

           

Many, many people are celebrating Christmas the Holyday unawares. The temptation may be to blame them for their failure to be aware of what they are doing. But we would be wrong if we did. If there is any failure, it is the failure of those of us who know what is holy in the holiday for not making the unaware aware of the holiness of this day.

           

We who have failed to convey the true and holy meaning of Christmas to those who celebrate the holiday can begin to redress our failure by inviting our neighbors to keep the holyday with us, to make the holiday truly holy. It doesn't take much. But it can mean the beginning of a new awareness, an understanding of what this season is all about.

           

Have a blessed holy/holiday.

WHO IS(ARE) YOUR ICON(S)?

Tom Hanks the actor was in Pittsburgh recently to film segments for his new film in which he portrays Pittsburgh’s great national and international icon, Fred Rogers. This past Wednesday our country, if only for a passing moment in time, stood still and, hopefully, together, to mourn the passing and celebrate the life of another national and international icon: President George H. W. Bush.

Our children grew up with Mr. Rogers as their teacher and adult role model. I would like to think that their parents were. But the truth is parents really don’t become role models until their children are about twenty-five or so. Hopefully we have at least been favorably compared to Mr. Rogers.

As I watched the service For President Bush on my tablet after returning from mother/mother-in-law duty, I wondered if the gentlemen in the first row on both side of the aisle were comparing themselves to the man they had come to remember and if it was a favorable comparison. (I’ll keep my opinion to myself.)

To paraphrase and old folk-protest song of my younger days, where have all the icons gone? Mr. Rogers is dead and my children are grown adults, some with children of their own. Who are my grandchildren’s icons? Who are our leaders’ icons? Who do we have to teach us the lessons of caring about everyone, service of others, kindness and generosity with no expectance of anything in return, for doing the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do?

Fred Rogers taught us that. President Bush taught us that. As a dyed-in-the wool Democrat I did not always agree with his policies but I never ever doubted he did what he believed was best for his country and our world. Mr. Rogers would agree. What I find refreshing is that both men lived and taught because their faith was deeply imbedded in their very being: Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian pastor. George Bush was a lifelong committed Episcopalian.

Are not our icons those who have a deep-seated faith in God and who live out that faith in their daily lives and never, ever wearing that faith on their shirt sleeves? I didn’t have Mr. Rogers as my icon. I had Anne Pugliese, my Mom. In her own quiet and unassuming manner she taught me and my siblings the lessons Fred Rogers and, I trust and hope, my wife and I taught our children.

We all have those icons in our lives who call us to be better than we are simply because we can be better. They may not be with us in body but they are always with us in spirit. They taught us by their actions even as their words spoke volumes. More importantly, however, they are reminders that we are to be icons to others. We are whether we realize it or not. The question remains: what kind of icon am I?

BUNNY

I have a friend whom everyone calls “Bunny”. It’s not because he looks like a lost little rabbit (although sometimes there are resemblances), not because he is light on his feet (although in his long-past prime he was), and not because he is so cute and cuddly (although certain women I know think he is). No Bunny is called Bunny, I think, simply because the name doesn’t fit.

Let’s face it, can you see an All-State linebacker called “Bunny”? Can you imagine a hardnosed miner or steelworker called “Bunny”? Can you even believe a grown man called by that name? It just doesn’t fit, does it? And yet “Bunny” fits Bunny perfectly.

“Why?” you ask. “Bunny” fits Bunny perfectly because “Bunny” doesn’t fit: you never know when he is serious or when he is pulling your leg, when he is telling the truth or feeding you carrots.

Now this behavior might be disconcerting to some of us who just don’t like our legs being pulled. Some of us want a spade to be called a spade and not a shovel, if you know what I mean. Some of us just hate to be played the fool even in jest.

But people like Bunny are there to remind us that life, serious as it is, isn’t all that serious. Life is to be lived, loved and thoroughly enjoyed. One cannot be so straight-laced that any deviation is looked upon as out of the ordinary. The ordinary in life is often to expect the unexpected and not to always expect the expected.

That is why Bunny is so refreshing. I have learned, as the women I mentioned above have not, to expect the unexpected from Bunny. That includes a tear in his eye when he is telling me about how his Beloved lit a cigarette for him while he was flat on his back – and you know how she hates him to smoke. The unexpected also includes his total devotion to his children and all children, something that is rare these days when “Me First” often seems the pervading philosophy of life. The unexpected is being there when anyone needs him. Another rarity.

I write this not to give Bunny and the Bunnys of this world swelled heads. I write it to remind me, to remind all of us, that part of what makes Bunny Bunny is also part of us: the ready smile, the unpredictability, the joy of living, even when life seems unfair.

Sometimes we forget that life, our life, was given to us to be enjoyed, not just endured; to be lived out, not just languished through; to be celebrated, not just completed. Bunny enjoys, lives, celebrates life, every day of it. So should we.

Into every life a Bunny needs to come: to pick us up when we are down; to make us smile amid our tears; to hold our hand when we are weak; to ease our pain when we hurt so badly. We need to find our Bunny and we need to be a Bunny one to another.