When Materialism is Not Enough for You . . .

There is a core truth to Christianity that is pendant on eternal life.

At a point in human history God became human, died on a cross, redeemed all who sought redemption from sin, and provided a life after death with Him in heaven. God's act of becoming human changes everything for us. By becoming human, God made possible a personal relationship with Him. Jesus Christ by his life, death, and resurrection provided spiritual sustenance to humankind bereft otherwise of what our spiritual side requires, hope.

Try living as I have done without hope. I have arrived at wanting something more than mortal life can provide. One can persist in living out his or her days believing that this material life is all. Or one can examine the promise of life eternal which God offers one when he or she should be ready (if ever).

The basic symbolism Jesus Christ chose to sustain us in faith in him was that of bread, ordinary bread. However, mere symbolism would be empty of spiritual gain. This is about feeding our spiritual selves. He who wants to share in God's promise of life eternal must eat his body and drink his blood. Through the words of institution, He provided us with consecrated bread and wine. He or she who takes the bread and wine accepts the gift of this God of Mercy, Himself, into his life. We communicants partake of the very feast of heaven that one day will be awarded a human who dies in Christ.

In youth, I believed that the world into which we were born was world enough and time enough. Now as I grow world weary at the failures, individual and societal, I conclude this life is not enough and want for more than what my materialistic life provides. Critics of Christianity would say that in hoping for life eternal, believers are grasping at an illusion. And of course I have to say that as a believer in life eternal I am deluded if I do not make the Lord of Life my everyday reality by both confirming God is Love and trying to live my life as one whose life is in the Lord's.

Communion is the very spiritual meal many who die each day lack. I am saddened for those who live in despair having tired of this life. With communion, death has no victory and my own personal failure is not relevant except that it be to the greater honor and glory of the God of Love.

To my brothers and sisters, I encourage you in your faith in this God. I also accept that if life has not served you up an empty plate, you may as yet not be ready to accept the peculiar belief in the Risen Lord. Then that is what makes this a faith question: if there is life eternal it is in God's hands, not mine nor yours. It is yours to accept or reject his gift of life eternal.

News from Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico

My daughter the marine biologist is back in from the Gulf. The State of Florida sent its specialists out into the gulf to survey the water quality before the inevitable degradation works its way into the gulf stream loop into the Florida Keys. She I understand is taking training on cleaning waterfowl and other sea creatures too which should be poisoned by the mess made by the greed of British Petroleum.

Lida Greens GC

Over some twenty-six years, I've been able to share in the life and times of my father Jack Hilber and now my older brother Joe in a family business venture. Both of whom worked a farmstead into a lovely par 3 golf course with the more than capable assistance and partnership of the life partners of each, Clarissa (Lucier) Hilber and Nancy (Freed) Hilber. The landscape though changed by the golf course is much the same as it was in frontier days. The marshes are teeming with life whether it's the fox hunting eggs or the loons sounding a distant call. God bless this venture for ever!

Oil Spill in The Gulf of Mexico, A Nail in the ...

Last fall I opined on the folly in our human conduct (see "A True Devotion to Progress for Mankind," Glebewise, September 25, 2009). I mentioned that building nuclear plants to generate energy without the viable means to store nuclear waste was folly. Well, the general concept is even more lost on us than I thought then.

The latest is a deep sea oil drilling operation has blown out, killed eleven employees, and is spewing countless thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico daily (potentially millions of gallons). The oil slick is coming ashore and destroying plant and animal ecosystems. The scope of the catastrophe is not yet known. The fear is that the oil will catch in the Gulf Stream and work its way into the Florida Keys and then up the Atlantic coastline.

Many are holding recriminations until the scope of the disaster are better appreciated, especially as a solution to cap the oil at the source on the ocean floor is attempted (see New York Times, May 6, 2010). The blame will come to rest on us all: (a) the government did not require working safeguards and (b) the industry did the drill's preventer on the cheap to maximize profits. Halliburton, the war profiteering corporation, is reportedly involved as a supplier for the Deep Sea Explorer project. With Halliburton involved the disaster has the smell of a skunk (when liability is denied by British Petroleum and others who will travel the pathway of Exxon in the aftermath of the Exxon-Valdez disaster).

What we do know is that the Exxon-Valdez tanker disaster of March 24, 1989, was never cleaned up in any meaningful sense. Tanker spill was in the neighborhood of 10 million gallons. Congress's response to the disaster was to cap oil company liability for oil spill clean-up at $75 million dollars. The Supreme Court disallowed meaningful compensation to those Alaskans who suffered economic loss due to the spill. The seeds of the current disaster have long been sown. Drill Baby Drill is a disaster for mindlessness and despoiliation of our planet.