If you are an athe­ist, your haunt­ing ques­tion is “why?” If you are a the­ist, your haunt­ing ques­tion is “how?” It is really very sim­ple. If you think all of this is just a series of ran­dom acci­dents, you will have trou­ble find­ing mean­ing. It is too easy to reduce life to being an advanced ani­mal with no par­tic­u­lar pur­pose. If you believe that there is a Divine per­son­al­ity behind the uni­verse, you will be con­cerned about how to live and how to relate to that Being — what­ever It may be.

I pre­fer “how” to “why” for a num­ber of rea­sons. I guess I need to feel like life has some sort of ulti­mate pur­pose. Then again, the chance of this being just a series of cos­mic acci­dents is more than remote. I would rather be haunted by “how” than “why.” Life is an art. If I thought that life was only an acci­dent, I would be less patient about it and really not have any real rea­son to con­tinue this thing called “life.” It is just too hard to find mean­ing in a series of accidents.

We are too com­plex and the planet is too well suited to us for this to be ran­dom. Also, I am a per­son of style. “How” is cool. “Why” is sopho­moric. I have an eye for the arts and a healthy sus­pi­cion that I am being observed by some per­fect Being. I even have the ego to think that the Being involved cares what hap­pens to lit­tle old me.

If you have set­tled the “why” then the “how” is not such a big deal. Any­thing this grand and cre­ative would have to be lov­ing and for­giv­ing. Appar­ently life is some sort of gift. Mean­ing is not hard to find if you are an opti­mist — if you trust Life for what it seems to be in all of its appar­ently bizarre forms.

One ques­tion leads you through life with a frown — the other with a smile. I am haunted by “how” as if com­ing to know a mys­te­ri­ous Friend.

When you grasp that every­thing in this world is tem­po­rary you are free to live fully. All attempts at per­ma­nent secu­rity are an illu­sion. At best we have the moment. The vast major­ity of those moments are very good. The lesser ones pass. Life is a river. It is in con­stant motion. You can either go with it or exhaust your­self try­ing to swim upstream. Enjoy the ride. Learn as you go. What you expe­ri­ence is always a lit­tle bit novel. The harder you try to con­trol it the more out of con­trol you become.

This moment will pass — as will the next. In the pass­ing of these moments you will notice an inner observer that is eter­nal. Iden­tify with it. It is here for the soul’s edu­ca­tion. All mate­r­ial con­cerns are tem­po­rary. They come and they go. What remains is that one sense of expe­ri­ence that matures from stage to stage. It is intan­gi­ble but more real than what­ever you are touch­ing at this moment.

Once you dis­cover the tem­po­rary, you are free to pur­sue all within your grasp: an edu­ca­tion, a career, a fam­ily, an adven­ture — an eter­nal life. If you ever try to stay in one place, you will become a fool. There is no stop­ping. There is only life in motion.

C.S. Lewis said that hell is a place where noth­ing ever changes. It is death. It is the end of the road. Life ceases. All things stay the same. It is the oppo­site of what you are expe­ri­enc­ing right now. It is totally pre­dictable. It is totally secure. It goes nowhere.

On the other hand you have life: a body that changes; sea­sons that are ever in tran­si­tion; winds that shift; social forces that mean­der along; flow­ers that go from ugly seeds to beau­ti­ful blos­soms in a sin­gle short season.

You are alive. The stages are tem­po­rary but the expe­ri­ence is eternal.

Quan­tity and qual­ity are not the same thing. The two are eas­ily con­fused in a world over­sold on con­sump­tion. Style beats amount any day, but it hard to see that in con­tem­po­rary life. The most vio­lated of the Ten Com­mand­ments has to do with the Sab­bath. There are too many vested inter­ests in over-work and over-consumption. Econ­o­mists brag about the 24/7 econ­omy, but the results send us to hos­pi­tal emer­gency rooms and emo­tional ther­apy centers.

We were not designed for a non-stop lifestyle. With a loss of real time off comes a whole world of social mal­adies. Our time off becomes just another sched­ule of activ­i­ties — all under­writ­ten by insti­tu­tional “needs” and beck­on­ing per­sonal activ­i­ties. It is very addic­tive. “Sab­bath” is replaced by quick chem­i­cal substitutes…with very poor results in the long run.

Jesus made it very clear that “a man’s life does not con­sist of what he has acquired.” In prin­ci­ple, we humans are not so much about hav­ing as being. This is not to put down cap­i­tal­ism. It is just a reminder that we are Homo sapi­ens — mankind the wise — not human­ity the end­less doer/consumer.

Do noth­ing once in a while — and for a very long while. Just be! There is an art to tak­ing time off and get­ting time away. Done prop­erly, it enhances the work you do when you return. Here is an idea: instead of the sec­ond or third job, sim­plify your mate­r­ial exis­tence. Life is found in the liv­ing of it, not in col­lect­ing more paper and plastic.

Go through today med­i­ta­tively instead of acquis­i­tively and see if you do not feel better.

There is strength in diver­sity. Every orga­ni­za­tion that exists for very long starts hav­ing gate­keep­ers — peo­ple that selec­tively accept or reject oth­ers “for the good of the orga­ni­za­tion.” That was the very first prob­lem the early church encoun­tered. It over­came the prob­lem, but has had to over­come it again and again.

The Statue of Lib­erty is the mon­u­ment to open invi­ta­tions. Con­se­quently, there are major cities in Amer­ica that boast of nearly one-hundred first lan­guages. The con­flicts that are inevitable are resolved by hav­ing some sort of “meta-story” — a greater set of images and tales that bind diverse peo­ple together in the name of some higher calling.

God excludes the exclu­sivists. Sooner or later the gate­keep­ers find them­selves on the out­side. “The first become last and the last become first.” Per­son­ally, I do not join exclu­sive orga­ni­za­tions — not even polit­i­cal par­ties. My view of the church is an all-embracing uni­ver­sal one. Church growth works when peo­ple are allowed to share their tal­ents and where they can feel loved and accepted.

This is the oppo­site of how the world runs. Jesus told para­bles of ban­quets in which the invited guests snubbed the invi­ta­tion and their places were then filled with the peo­ple they had rejected. In short, God will have peo­ple if it takes scrap­ing them off the bot­tom (a sort of tongue-in-cheek para­ble). It has a W.C. Fields ring to it when he said he would not be a mem­ber of any club that would have him as a member.

The church belongs to the rejected. Its pri­mary mem­ber­ship require­ment is in not being wor­thy of being a mem­ber. You have to smile when you see God’s humor in this. For some rea­son, Deity is most at home with hon­est fail­ures than with pre­tend “good peo­ple” (what­ever those are). I cher­ish my church mem­ber­ship because of its grand para­dox: I don’t deserve to be in it, which is exactly what makes me feel most at home.

Reject­ing oth­ers is actu­ally a form of self-rejection. What­ever mon­ster I project onto oth­ers is appar­ently the mon­ster I have allowed to live inside of me. What­ever I reject about myself, I reject in oth­ers. In other words, I am my own worst gate-keeper.

So, open the door. Accept every­thing about your­self so you can accept oth­ers. That which gets on my last nerve is about my last nerve. You have to smile when you catch onto this…and then life gets a whole lot better.