todays's meditation

What You Can't Live Without – Make a list; check it twice.   At one time or another, almost everyone has been asked, "If you had to spend the rest of your life on a desert island, what would you take with you?"  It's an idle question, of course, yet it invites us to reflect on what really matters in our lives.  The names of persons we love would probably be at the top of our list, followed by . . .  what or whom?  Extreme conditions require extreme choices.  In my own case, besides people, I'd want books and music: the Bible and Bach, certainly, and maybe a collection of my favorite poetry.  But my list reflects the odd tastes and interests of an educated, aging, white male of European origin.  Food and water would surely be at the top of the list for most of the world (didn't Ghandi once say that if Christ ever came to India, he'd better come as bread?).   And freedom from fear, terror, sickness, pain, oppression, violence, injustice – these too would probably make the top of the list.  Could I survive without hope?  Probably not.  Could I survive without companionship and love?  Certainly not.   And what about faith?  In the great "Hymn to Faith" found in the Letter to the Hebrews (Chapter 11), we're told that faith is the "assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  We're told that faith made Sarah, old and barren, the joyful mother of Isaac.  And faith saved Rahab, a prostitute who once showed hospitality to Joshua's spes (Joshua 2:1-7) and who is counted as one of Jesus' ancestors in Matthew's genealogy (Matthew 1:5).  Faith confronts us with the unlikely, the improbable, the unforeseen – and sometimes, the unsavory.  Maybe faith is what "desert island"; maybe it's the thing that makes everything else possible. This came from "Daybreaks", Liguori, by Nathan D. Mitchell     "I set before you life & death, blessings and curses; CHOOSE LIFE, so that you and your children will live!"  Deuteronomy 30:19