Meaning of Life

I wanted to finish off my series on the Sacredness of Creation with something meaningful, so I chose to write about The Meaning of Life. Not being sure what to say, I fetched my cellphone, which was fully charged, and asked Siri to tell me the meaning of life. She said '42' and remained nearly 100% charged. I gather someone asked her that question before, and Siri knew from experience to give the short answer and conserve battery power. Thinking I could pad this post with another 458 words to make something worth reading, I Googled 'the meaning of life' and found an article that does not appear to have an end and that scatters hypertext links in every direction to fill the entire domain of human thought back to the dawn of history. If you have time, you can read it HERE.

If you think you don't have time to waste on the meaning of life, you are mistaken, because working out the meaning of life is exactly what you are doing while you are too busy to read it in Wikipedia. Let me be clear: the meaning of life is that we work out the meaning of life, and that's what we are all busy doing whether we are aware of it or not. Sometimes we are tempted to take a short cut by accepting the answer provided by an expert who seems to have it figured out. Authoritative answers, even the most promising ones, are incomplete. If you examine a good answer from different perspectives, you will find that it is more question than answer, which tosses you back into the mystery to figure it out for yourself. That is what we get from Holy Scriptures, philosophy, and science; they provide good answers which are found wanting, over and over again, endlessly.

Ideas about the meaning of life are like shoes that serve their purpose for a time until you notice that they pinch. Try on this thought. Walk around in it and see if it fits. Perhaps God-in-us keeps us looking for the meaning of life. Perhaps that is what drives creation, a process in which everything participates, including us as we emerge from mindless ignorance into humbling and astonishing light. 

And if that doesn't feel like The Meaning of Life, just keep looking.