The Easy Truth that Nothing is New Under the Sun

I can close my eyes and picture the gentle, rolling terrain around my parents' house in upstate New York. Not mountains or plains, but something in between. To the north, the Adirondacks erupt from the ground with a weathered sense of clash and violence that--in its periodic rock faces--hints at the power that formed them millions of years ago. To the west, the terrain starts to flatten as New England morphs into the Midwest.

All of it was like that a hundred years ago, when my great grandfather rode the logs down the Hudson River to keep food on the table. It was there a thousand generations before that, and it will be there eons from now. It's permanent and lasting and it was seen everything.

In Ecclesiastes, the writer, Qohelet, the Preacher, likes to say there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that comes has come before. People have lived before through whatever comes tomorrow.

When I think of the billions of people who've walked this earth, I am at once both overwhelmed and consoled. I'm overwhelmed because more than the stars in the heavens, the magnitude of human existence from the beginning of time, the idea that there have been that many individual souls, makes me feel small and relatively insignificant.

And I am consoled because of the words of the Preacher. Nothing is new on the face of the earth.

Twenty years ago, when the wall came down and people faced down tanks in harsh dictatorships, the world seemed new and fresh. People spoke of the triumph of democracy and the end of history. Less than a generation later, the world is once again a scary and foreboding place. Economic ruin or environmental Armageddon will surely be our doom, if Russia, China, or terrorism isn't.

Two decades everything seemed possible; now everything seems suspect. The church, the government, big business, even baseball players have shown themselves to be corrupt and both too strong and too brittle. Closer to home, the rules of business have changed such that even if you excel at your job, you could lose it to India or Uruguay or a computer, and who knows if or when you'll find another one.

The prospect of navigating the minefield of modern life seems like a slow-motion march to oblivion and confidence can seem like a fool's vision, a mirage.

But then I think of the hills and trees around my parents' house and the generations of people who've faced down those kinds of odds, and more difficult ones, and somehow managed not only to hang on, but to build the better future that's our present.

There's nothing new under the sun.

Should my job go away, that's happened before. It's happened to me before. Should I default on the mortgage, that's happened before. No matter what happens, it's happened before. And it will happen again. And no matter what, things will go on. Time will continue it's relentless march.

People in this world have lived in caves; survived ice ages, droughts, famines, and pandemics; they've seen economies collapse and emerge. They've wailed in agony at the death of a familiar loved one--and wept in wonder at the birth of a new loved one. All of it has happened before. And all of it will happen again.

I've no idea what the future holds. I could lose my job in a matter of weeks. If that happens, I might find a better, more exciting job. I might land someplace where I can help other colleagues. Or I might lose everything--at least for the moment.

And yet those who've come before me have triumphed, or I wouldn't be here. Those who've come before you have triumphed or you wouldn't be here.

How comforting that there's nothing new under the sun. And how comforting that our power and our wills are such that whatever happens, we'll figure it out and get to tomorrow somehow. It might not be an easy trek, or a pretty one, but it's guaranteed to happen because the only thing standing between here or there is time, and that's outside our control.

US: Religion? We don' need no steenkeeng religion!

The Jugglers for Jesus. That's what did it for me.

In the middle of the Terri Schiavo circus, two people showed up at the Hospice of the Pinellas Suncoast and said that God told them to come to Florida and juggle for Jesus and Terri Schiavo. The Schiavo case was a big deal here long before Glenn Beck's newly national voice helped make it bigtime. When it started, I was on the side of life. After all, if her eyes could track the balloon, then there had to be somethng there. And didn't we owe her the benefit of the doubt? I know and respect people who know her brother, and they respect him. So much for the communitive properties of respect.

I was wrong. Glenn Beck was wrong. And the Jugglers for Jesus were really, really wrong. The circus ignored the seventy-one other families in the Hospice, looking for dignity in their last days. And it ignored the pain of their families, who had to run a security gauntlet to get in. The circus caused a local elementary school to close because of security fears. If Glenn Beck would have said, "Guys move it up the road half a mile," that's all it would have taken. But winning was more important than anything else. Winning and power.

So perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at a survey released this week in which the percentage of people who answered "None" when asked to identify their religion nearly doubled, from 8.2 percent to 15 percent. (For the record, "None" does not equal atheist. Only .7 percent of the respondents claim to be atheist.)

Should anyone be surprised by this? Look at what's happened since 1990. Almost every televangelist in the business has had a problem of one sort or another. Their responses, while typically shrouded in tears, have appeared insincere and self-indulgent.

When two generations of priests, decided that celebacy didn't apply to teenaged boys, the Catholic church not only covered it up, but one of its Cardinals proposed excommunication for accusers, even if their accusations were true.

Then there's the little matter of Islamic fundamentalists flying airplanes into buildings. It's not as big a scale, but when television stations refuse to air Saving Private Ryan because of the cursing, things have gone too far.

For the record, until recently, I have been Catholic. I was Catholic by choice, having studied the theology and found it to support the vast majority of my core beliefs. Donna Payant aside, my support for the death penalty is almost gone because of prayerful reflection. But against this backdrop, and given some events in my church recently, I am technically not aligned with any specific religion right now. So I understand why people would say "None."

Religion has been important. Commercials speaking of and featuring Beyonce's dancing ass don't belong on commercials in childrens' programming. The civil rights movement was largely sparked by religion. And you'd be hard pressed to say organizations like the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities are detrimental.

But religion has also become heavy-handed, proud, and arrogant. It's more concerned with what happens in the bedroom than what happens in the boardroom, or what happens when people lose their hope. In many cases, it's more interested in condemning abortion than it is in helping a woman who chose abortion to bind her wounds and live her life in the best possible way going forward.

A man--a minister--named Steve Brown has said that Christianity works best when it's not in power. Maybe this is a blessing, rather than a curse.