This is a photo of a page from my great grandfather Lewellyn Christopher Seal's Bible. He was born the year the Civil War started, and died the year World War II began. According to family lore, he wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box, but was a good man, and a devout Christian. He wrote religious poetry in his Bible in his beautiful script. I'm amazed that it's not only so neat, but that he made so few mistakes!

The page entitled 'Ask  Believe Receive' suggests that the idea behind that recent boffo best-seller The Secret is hardly unique. Not fair! My great grandpa ought to sue for a part of those enormous royalties! *Just kidding*

I also have a bunch of letters he wrote to a native African missionary he supported in what was then the Belgian Congo, and I also have the missionary's responses, as well as a photo of the guy. Looking at that picture taken so long ago, and knowing what Africa is like at first hand, I wonder not whether that missionary's work was effective, but more basic things, like whether or not the village exists, or if any any of his descendants survive.

Scott Kellermann, one of my very dearest friends, works in a place not unlike so many other out of the way corners of Africa. The people are poor, very poor. There isn't much for people to eat apart from baked bananas, potatos, millet, and a few fruits and vegetables. It's on the edge of the Worst Place In The World, the Eastern Congo.

When I was in Buhoma, SW Uganda this past August, looking at the hospital I wondered, 'Will all this be here in ten years?' No one knows. Africa is a strange, unforgiving place, and the human effort and money which would raise up an enduring insititution in other places counts for nothing there.

What's the point then, if chances are that nothing will survive very long? I guess it's about trying to do what is right by someone who needs your help, and not expecting any more than that.

When I walk home from work at the end of the day I often turn around and look at the lovely front of Trinity Church. It's East Coast Gothic Revivial style, I suppose. It's pretty much a copy of Trinity Church, Sonora (except the tower is on the opposite side), which together with Emmanuel Church, Grass Valley are the oldest Episcopal churches in California. It's been standing there since 1872. But it's made out of wood, unlike my parish churches of Etton and Helpston in England, which were built in the 10th century on foundations even earlier than that. And they are stone buildings, with walls two to three feet thick at least.

Someday, beyond doubt, even those wonderful enduring walls will crumble, though they may last much longer than Trinity, Nevada City's wood construction. Human beings often struggle to find meaning in the face of the impermanence of all their efforts, so they assume what is will go on forever. I guess the recent fnancial/economic meltdown put paid to that illusion!

This afternoon I took a walk in the Pioneer Cemetery which is on a knoll just west of Nevada City. It's so beautiful, in part, because of its lonely, abandoned atmosphere. No neatly mown grass sward, just a carpet of pine needles underneath the trees covering up our inevitably clay soil underneath. There are lots of wobbly little wooden plaques stuck upright in the earth, cut in a coffin-like shape, without lettering, marking the grave of someone unknown. A lot of those fragile memorials to nameless people have rotted in the ground and already toppled over. And then there are a few marble headstones, their incised letters gradually melting in the weather and the years.

I have no doubt that some day -and may it be long, long years- Trinity Church will vanish, whether by fire or termites or dry rot, or redevelopment. And then, what will all I -we- tried to do mean? The lovely interior, the beautiful stone wall, the stained glass windows. Is that the reason why I -we- do all this, make all this effort?

Of course not. But, it's good to have a backdrop for our worship, for people's seeking and finding God. And it's a Mitzvah (http://www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo/kid/1533/jewish/Mitzvah.htm) - a part of our spiritual practice - to make where we worship beautiful, in a human sense, for God.The Jews call it 'adorning the Mitzvah'. Doing a Mitzvah isn't just obeying a commandment, it's a way of drawing closer to God. Doing your best on the Mitzvah is a way of honoring the Eternal (as some orthodox Jews call Him, avoiding even a hint of the Name). The church is a microcosm of the traditional Christian cosmology, but like everything that comes together in time and space, it comes apart just as easily as it came together, and maybe even easier.

On a somewhat regular basis I take delivery of the cremated remains of people. The box is always surprisingly heavy for a little thing. And I always ask myself as I feel its heft, 'So it all comes down to this does it?'

This evening, when I was driving to Lori and Scott Leaman's house to anoint, lay hands on, and pray for her and the family before she and Scott and Becca go to Stanford tomorrow for her surgery, this went through my mind suddenly and powerfully: 'In exchange  for this fleeting world we are given Eternity.' And even while we're in this world we're given the scent of Eternity. Sometimes we glimpse it, or recall it, if for just a moment.

Psalm 56:8 'My wandering You have Yourself counted; place my tears in Your flask, are they not in Your record?'

Indeed, nothing is forgotten, nothing is overlooked. The transience we experience and find so painful at times is part of the picture, a necessary part. But what is done is not lost, and God has counted all our tears. They are in His flask, and in time will turn to joy.