THOUGHTS ON YOM KIPPUR
      It's the Jewish New Year. It's our New Year. It's a time to put our failings behind us and resolve a better life.

      It's a time for re-visiting our spiritual foundations, a time to re-connect with our values and priorities.

      I could go lots of directions with this. The President's problems and failings, ethics, values, judgement, forgiveness.

      Or, I could think of some summer moments that challenged spiritual foundations. Like the death of Jeni Lockrem, Grace's teacher and Jean's colleague. Age 45, of cancer. Or the death of Betty Bryant, long time friend of Paul and Mary, as well as Jean and me. Murdered.

      I have long ago given up the idea that God is involved in such events. I guess I have given up the idea of a person-type God who looks down with love and power and presence on our lives. It makes no sense to think that God helps and protects good people who pray, because it doesn't happen. Anyway, if there were such a God, the horrors in our world would not exist.

      I didn't say God doesn't exist. I just said that a person-God does not exist.

      Anyway, we came away from our cabin on two occasions this summer to attend memorial services. We went to St Mary's Catholic Church and to First Christian Church in Portland.

      I keep forgetting that there are people who still believe like children, that somehow God is still doing these things to people. The priest dared to tell us that God had a special purpose or need for Jeni, so he took her. The various readings and ceremonies and prayers felt like something from another age.

      The service at First Christian was better. Nevertheless, there was an over-riding assumption that God could not be questioned about this awful event. "O God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home." Really?

      I admit it. I'm a cynic and skeptic and non-believer in such a God. I came to the services knowing that God doesn't do anything.

      Yet, in both services I found myself affirming a faith anyway.
 Perhaps the words of the first hymn we sang at Betty's service said it best:

  "O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee;
   I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths
   Its flow may richer, fuller be."
      I was helped by that thought. I could embrace faith in that kind of love. Paul sang a solo about "Love makes the time, the time of your life never ending." I think it is 1st John that teaches us that "All who abide in love abide in God."

      That is believable. That is here and now. That is a moment-worthy faith.

      In such times we throw ourselves upon mystery.
 
      We trust ourselves to a spirit of life we don't understand.

      We trust ourselves to a love that will not let us go.

      Then we gather to embrace and make our faith personal so life can go on.

 - Art Morgan, Fall, 1998