the way it is

As tradition has it, when Julian of Norwich asked why there is sin and suffering in the world, Christ answered that it was necessary that there be sin, but that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. 

This comes to mind the morning after Hurricane Isaias. Such violence is sin in the nature of things - - hurricane, tornado, earthquake, tsunami, lightning, wildfire - - with their beguiling beauty.

That evening in San Diego two-thirds of our lifeTime ago when we watched wildfire race down the side of a mountain at sixty miles an hour. To the east of our home, some miles distant, scattering glowing coals in our direction. Beautiful. Frightening. Sin, evil in the nature of things.

Hurricane Isaias from above, a satellite point of view. 

Which, point-of-view is the key:

from whose POV, whose perspective? From Nature's POV, hurricanes are cleansing and restorative, lightning strikes and wildfires, serpents that crawl into ratholes and help maintain the balance of nature, a spider leaping out and grabbing a mouse, scavenger birds hostile and protective of their carrion, crocodiles feasting as wildebeests cross the river mindlessly, a grass-feeding animal screaming in pain as lions tear pieces from it. Evil in the nature of things.

Darwin took note of it, didn't he.

A stillborn baby? At St Luke's Children's Cancer Center, a young daddy holding a bald little girl? Jesuit scholar and theologian Pierre Wolff writes, "May I Hate God?" Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, "When Bad Things Happen To Good People," as he mourns his son Aaron, who died of progeria at the age of fourteen. Half my lifeTime ago, the tiny pink casket I carried down the aisle of Trinity Church and laid on the altar of God. Sin, evil in the nature of things. 

Who or What is God? The question of a Jew in concentration camp as he watches a nine year old boy swing, jerking and writhing in agony, at the end of the hangman's noose: Where is God?

Officiating the funeral of a good and holy woman dead of brain cancer, turning from the pulpit, my shout of rage at the altar and Cross, "What the hell's the matter with you?"

We need not allow ourselves to be bullied and cowed as Job let himself be. Notwithstanding the sin, the evil cruelty, the arrogant response if any at all, along with Job as enabled, conscious, self-aware creatures, we are entitled to ask the question, to demand an answer. If we are not entitled, then, with Pierre Wolff, either God is not Grace, or God does not exist. 

Life as it is for us humans while we humans inhabit Earth, tiny planet, a speck in our Milky Way among trillions of other galaxies. What is man, that you are mindful of him?

We like to place blame: shall we return to Eden and YHWH Elohim's absurd and outrageous warning to our ignorant and innocent forebears?  

In human life, the morning after a hurricane.

It's all in your point of view, who and where you are, and how you see things. 

Baruch ata, Adonai Elohim, melek ha-olam, shehecheyanu ...

Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the Universe, who gives us life ... and has brought us to this Time.

T91