What Though My Joys and Comforts Die

our lives are filled with moments.  some of them are pleasurable, others not so much so.  we try to connect these fleeting experiences into meaningful stories, so that there is a relationship between one moment and the next.  we tell ourselves that one event leads to the next.  sometimes, one is the cause of the next, but, for the most part, there is a randomness to life.  we cannot control what follows from one moment to the next. 

for example, i may be engaged in conversation with another person.  i may think that a comment i make prompts a certain response from the one with whom i'm speaking, but i cannot predict with any certainty what my conversation partner may say based on what i've said before.  our response to one another can lead the exchange down paths that may not have been intended when we began talking.  a comment may lead to an angry or an agreeable response, or it may end the visit altogether.

 

it is the nature of our interactions to be beyond our control.  we cannot control the flow of a conversation, much less the flow of our lives.  perhaps, it is this very inability to control what happens next that causes us to try to exert more control over our lives, thinking that in doing so we can move events in the way we believe we want them to go.  perhaps that is why some theistic religions teach that there is a divine being that is in control and that whatever happens does so because of a plan that is being carried out at the direction of that being.  this belief is an attempt to make sense of the randomness of life, rather than admitting that life is beyond our control.

when someone is stricken with a dreaded disease or when someone dies, we often hear that this is "god's" will, part of the divine plan.  we are told that the illness has a reason which we may not understand, but, if we will accept the divine will, we will learn from what has happened.  in the same way, we hear people saying that someone dies because "god" is calling that person home because "god" needs the deceased more than we do.  these views help those who espouse them to deal with tragic events rather than admitting that these unfathomable disasters are random acts that come to the good and the evil without discrimination.  as jesus said, the rain falls "on the just and the unjust."

as i sat at breakfast the other morning, watching the wind buffet the tree branches outside my window in one direction and then in another, i thought that we cannot control life any more than we can control the direction of the wind.  it goes where it will, and so do our lives.  may we learn to accept what life brings, using our minds to solve the problems with which it confronts us and being thankful when good comes our way.  may we not attribute the good or the evil to a supreme being that has caused it all or that we are the cause.  may we live in the knowledge that life is what it is in spite of our attempts to control it.  shalom.