You know that old phrase that we've been saying probably since there were enough people speaking the same words: why do bad things happen to good people? Today's first reading at church was from Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity. You work hard and crap happens to you anyway. Awful crap sometimes.
Ecclesiastes is a fascinating little book--most non-Catholics know it from the passage about a time for everything under the sun. A time to sow, a time to reap, a time for Crosby Stills and Nash to sing a song. From the introduction in the New American: Merit does not yield happiness for it is often tried by suffering. Riches and pleasures do not avail. Existence is monotonous, enjoyment fleeting and vain; darkness quickly follows. Life, then, is an enigma beyond human ability to solve.
But we all try to solve it. We all puzzle around things that happen, trying to make sense out of the suffering and loss around us, as well as what seems like ill-gotten gains by those we deem unworthy. We read into happenstance and coincidence and wonder at God's plan. At our best moments, we simply hope to understand someday and come to a peace with the unknowing.
This was all very poignant this morning at mass because Mike's aunt and uncle, Sheila and Bill, lost everything in a house fire yesterday. Everything is gone except the people who lived there--themselves, a son and daughter-in-law, and their 3 year old grandson--and their vehicles and whatever else they kept in the garage. Everything else burned up in a house fire so hot it was still burning 8 hours after the fire department arrived. By the time Sheila's brother saw it (he lives on the same property, in rural Illinois) and called 911, it was too hot to even get the dog out. All gone.
It will take them years, maybe decades, before they come up with a mental inventory of what they've lost. My mother-in-law keeps calling with updates and I can't even give her minimal responses like uh-huh because I'm sobbing on this end of the line.
This morning three parishes heard Ecclesiastes and the gospel parable about the wealthy man who tears down his barns to build bigger ones, and then took up a collection for Bill and Sheila. Three parishes because they share one pastor, and the boundaries between parishes are pretty fluid. Each of the three have relatives in attendance, friends, people who knew them from when. St. Catherine's, the parish they personally belong to, is a building about the size of my living and dining room. Seriously. Everyone there is related to you one way or another. After mass they gave Bill the collection and there was a lot of money--hundreds of dollars from one of the most impoverished counties in Illinois and one of the tiniest parishes I've ever known of. Bill said he had money in his pocket he didn't even know from where. Again, hundreds of dollars people just pressed into his palm when they saw him in the past 24 hours or so. Sheila said she hated taking from people, but really, when this happens, all people want to do is feed you and try to do something to ease the suffering. And it's not like they have a place to put donations that aren't cash, after all. Ma in Little House on the Prairie, as she cooks up the seed potatoes because they've been forced to move on from Indian territory, sighs and says there is no great loss without some small gain. Maybe that's so.
But they will--my father-in-law is a contractor, as is probably already known here--and he said once the insurance comes through, they could get a house up fast. Like a long weekend kind of fast. Mary Helen asked if we'd come down. My goodness I wouldn't miss that for anything.
The author of Ecclesiastes has something here, too:
If one falls, the other will life up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken. [Eccl 4:10-12]
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