Nothing new under the sun? Time to look above it

Ancient Israel’s King Solomon, reputed to be the wisest monarch of his time, once lamented that there was “Nothing new under the sun,” and “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

That’s the familiar literary recitation from Ecclesiastes I, anyway. The Message paraphrase might make a bit more sense in the 21st Century: “There’s nothing to anything — it’s all smoke . . . the sun comes up and the sun goes down, then does it again, and again — the same old round.”

Live long enough, and it is inevitable to nod and sigh in agreement with the jaded king of old.

Still, I turn back to that initial King James Version phrase, “Nothing new UNDER the sun.”

I believe your perspective must take flight, ABOVE the sun, to grasp truth, and hope.

Keep your gaze in front of you, or more likely, at your feet, despairing at the path your are on, and like Henry David Thoreau, you will find yourself one of those characters who live their lives in ‘quiet desperation.”

In his work, “Walden,” Thoreau — though of an existential, not religious worldview — urges looking above the sun, too, in the sense of climbing beyond the mundane to the true treasures of living.

Rather than being resigned to our “present low and primitive condition,” he writes about the almost metaphysical ecstasy of “the spring of springs arousing them” and the yearning to “rise to a higher and more ethereal life.”

I am reminded, anew, that it is time again to look above the sun.

Time to see, taste, touch and hear beauty, to cherish and embrace family and friends, and to let my faith in God carry me beyond mere sunrises and sunsets to other, eternal realms — whether experienced within the next breath or heartbeat, or in the passage of eons to come.

And, it's a journey best experienced hand-in-hand. Don't be afraid to reach out.

Mother's Day: Of generations fading, generations rising -- and tiny miracles

Mother's Day 2015 was sweet and melancholy, affirming even as it brought the aching of, and blessings of memories.

 Barbara received lovely cards, flowers and heartfelt calls from the kids (and me), and we reached out to our daughter and daughter-in-law with what we hope were the same levels of love. That was the sweet.

But it also was a melancholy day, with some tears. Barb's and my memories of her mom, who also was one of my best friends, are fresh and a little less painful years after her passing.

And there's my mother, in the final stages of Alzheimer's, no longer knowing or remembering me or my sister, or my dad. When I check on her, though, there's this: the nursing home staff says her loving, if now nonsensical attempts at speech are for her two baby dolls.

Sad, but I also smile at this: both her dolls are babies of color. So are her two most recently born grandsons.

Somewhere in her shredded memories, is there an inkling of this next generation? I don't know.

But the nursing home staff says she specifically chose, and constantly holds those two specific dolls out of the assortment of mostly white babies.

I always smile when my daughter sends me the most recent video of newborn Nate and toddler Gabe. This Mother's Day, I was able to smile a bit broader.

In so many ways, I have lost my mother as much as Barbara has lost her's. The mourning is different, but feels very much the same . . . and yet, there was this "miracle of the dolls."

I'll take it.