We can’t say big questions aren’t being answered. We can’t say nothing ever changes.

“Truth springs out of the earth,” a Psalm says. Sometimes it’s not a truth, but a theory, a hypothesis, an idea, that, despite its lack of definitivity, suddenly emerges as a dominant reality.

Forty years ago, I didn’t think I’d be alive now, but health and mortality have changed so much since then that, decades ago, I faced the idea that I was more likely to live to 100 than to die by 50.

In a college class, we discussed an idea that has since been one of my keys to understanding. A thesis has an antithesis, and the two will come to a synthesis– a new thesis. Countered by its own antithesis.

Everybody has wondered, what existed before the Big Bang? Where was the Big Bang? What was it? What was the context for it? And if and/or when we learn the answers, we’ll surely think, “That is so obvious!”

It’s not surprising that a lover of carcaradon carcarias, the Great White Shark, also loves Black Holes. There’s got to be some really cool stuff in those things! A “singularity–” that’s what’s in one, and that is an invisible, tiny piece of infinity.

The “multiverse” is becoming a household word. We have our universe, but is there any reason why this has to be the only one? No. Where is our universe? Our universe raises the same questions the Big Bang raises.  

“This universe is governed by certain laws and realities that effectively create a self-contained system of which its boundaries are such that we cannot as yet perceive of them as such. Furthermore, such a universe as this can only exist within a larger, superstructural framework of such a nature that, within it, individual universes come to exist.”

That sounds reasonable.

One thesis has been that this universe is the one and only universe. The antithesis is that this is one of an untold number of universes. The synthesis is that we can take all these multiverses and lump them together as the one universe, which I define as “everything there is.”

So, what about the singularities, and the Big Bang? No one knows what happens with a singularity, but when a singularity is explained, when the Big Bang is explained, the connection is magnificently obvious– that tiny, invisible piece of infinity was the fuel for the Big Bang, the seed that grew the universe.

In another universe, a Black Hole evaporated after its singularity evolved into this universe, which derives all its material from material absorbed by that Black Hole in its universe. In turn, our universe creates objects that become Black Holes with singularities.

Maybe not all singularities become Big Bangs. Maybe not all Big Bangs result in long-lived, complex universes like ours.

But I’m happy that, when my son asks me about the universe and the Big Bang, I’ll have more to tell him than anyone told me when I was growing up!

I am not decisive about Spring, except that it’s a season, and as long as three months can be long. If a February day feels all Spring and a March day feels all Winter, Spring has the flotational quality a season has when it is not just an interval of time, but a state of mind.

A Chameleons album, “Script of the bridge,” begins with a man softly quoting Sophocles: “In his Autumn before the Winter, comes man’s last, mad, surge of youth.” The beginning of an excellent album.

“What on earth are you talking about?!” protests his mother. It’s from a British TV show.

There we have the poignancy of life, that the mindset of WInter is present in Autumn to a man who has not yet cut himself off from his personal Springtime and to the Summer that the cycle of life would have recently ended. 

When we change the clocks twice a year, one despairs of beleagured integrity holding onto its rightful place in the world. Not rarely do we see hard numbers rounded off, intricate philosophies reduced to slogans, but beneath the easily tarnished surface perseveres the resilient bedrock of empirical reality.

The Earth goes around the Sun, and the way we tilt decides the length of daylight all around the globe. Equatorial peoples have an experience of the Sun, and daylight, decidedly different from polar folk, with variances in between.

So we have equinoxes and solstices, themselves overlapping over areas which include places with slightly different schedules. This year’s vernal equinox arrived March 20th at 9:57am, although Monday the 17th, the Sun rose at 7:17am and set at 7:17pm. That was the local equinox, and a good example why St. Patrick’s Day is another good choice for first day of Spring.

When the Sun sets after 7:00, that is not Winterish, but with the latest adjustments to Daylight Savings Time, we now have that extra hour of daylight arriving in Winter. 

March is not synonomous with Winter, although most of the month falls within Winter. June doesn’t seem Spring, September doesn’t seem like Summer, December doesn’t seem like Autumn. Although the symptoms of seasons overlap, and someone’s experience of the weather of a day will correspond to their idea of exactly what conditions exemplify the experience of a particular season.

March 20th seems an arbitrary time to begin Spring, but it’s the soundest science. It’s not an emotional decision, an agricultural construct, or a convenience to a year’s calendar. Spring arrives when the Earth is at its point in the orbit when this part of the Earth begins having the amount of daylight that indicates that the conditions of long nights and dormant earth are over.

Spring is cherry blossoms and thunderstorms, and, officially, the most precise equations of deepest, darkest, interstellar science!

As Winter ends and Spring begins, with Lent underway, St. Patrick’s Day arrives.

“Everybody is Irish on St. Patrick’s Day,” goes the saying. Who are they, then– the Irish?

If grandparents from Cork make one Irish, I’m Irish. If curly hair, freckles, a Donegal tweed hat and a blackthorn walking stick make one Irish, I’m Irish. If loving the woods, the ocean, the mountains, all of creation, one’s faith, and delighting in the written and spoken word and music and whiskey and stout make one Irish, I’m Irish.

If one’s people have been despised, starved, and disenfranchised in their own land and then despised where they sought refuge, I’ll call that Irish.

If your people have a history of prejudice and xenophobia, that’s Irish.

St. Patrick’s is a day to remember, educate, and celebrate.

Bushmills was long the Irish whiskey of choice in my family, before Jameson became ubiquitous. We then learned of Bushmills reputation as a Loyalist brand, and long shunned it, but Bushmills is Irish, is it not? As Irish as those of any part of Ireland are Irish. What people call themselves is one thing, but Ireland is one place, and its people, one people. Subject to deadliest dispute, of course, but, as humans are entitled to claim all the universe as our own, so we Irish can claim all Ireland as our own, as the Irish flag claims orange.

Abraham had this coversation with God. Would not God spare Sodom if even ten righteous men lived there? Had that conversation gone a little further, I think God would have spared Sodom if just one righteous man was there. Let me, then, not condemn Bushmills if one righteous man works there. That possibility exists as long as I cannot say for sure that is not the case, and I am not the guy in the position to decide such things.

Long ago, my grandparents and all their people lived in Ireland. Those grandparents were among the millions who emigrated, under duress, to the United States. But as a family we remember where we came from, as Christians in the human family remember Adam and Eve’s Eden. Mistakes were made, In Eden, Ireland, and every elsewhere, but even as we deservedly  sit in sackcloth and ashes, we celebrate the positive, glad to walk in woods full of streams and birdsong, to read Ulysses, A Pagan Place, Synge, Beckett, Wilde, Yeats, to listen to Rory Gallagher, Sinead O’Connor, Thin Lizzy, Stiff Little Fingers, Van Morrison, U2, My Bloody Valentine, The Chieftains, The Undertones, to drink in Irish pubs, shouting over the uillean pipes, fiddles, tin whistles and bodhrans, to eat corned beef, potatoes and cabbage, to drink Guinness, Jameson, Harp, Bailey’s, Murphy’s, Smithwick’s, to cheer on the Irish football team, glad to wear green, thankful for all our terrible beauty, glad to be Irish, glad to be human, glad to be alive! 

Between the heartwarming of Christmas and the soulstirring of Easter, we have the work of Lent to do.

Jesus also had that work of life to do.

Forty days in the desert and the temptations were incumbent upon Him at that stage in His life, although it might have seemed counterintuitive. He went public at His Baptism, then disappeared, when a publicity-minded adviser might have suggested He take advantage of His new visibility. “Well, the Son Of God was here a second ago, but He disappeared! Anybody seen the Lamb Of God?” Probably seemed flaky.

Major life changes of that scale often arrive unanticipated. Parents ponder when to have a child, but sometimes the child arrives years earlier than planned. We see someone at work one ordinary day, and never see him again. A tree grows in a place where, maybe 100 years ago, someone said, “That’s not a good place for a big tree.”

If a Christian doesn’t give up something for Lent, I think it’s because it’s hard even for an adult to give up chocolate for Lent.

When I see someone eating Easter candy during Lent, that’s shocking to me, and I laugh at myself, but it’s still shocking. My rationale, since Easter candy is on sale before Ash Wednesday, is that I can have Easter candy before Lent. I always give up chocolate and candy for Lent. When a social occasion including chocolate falls during Lent, one’s responsibilities as a gracious guest sometimes dictate having chocolate, or alcohol. It might be an occasion I’d rather avoid altogether, which is mortification enough, as is having chocolate I would rather avoid. I can always abstain after Easter for as many days as I failed to abstain as compensation.  

One can undertake arduous trials during Lent. He can attempt to be “the master of his domain” from Ash Wednesday through Easter, and also have no candy, chocolate, meat, or alcohol.

One can take the positive approach of undertaking a healthy activity for Lent instead (or in addition to an abstinence). Because a walk around the block after dinner is easier than giving up chocolate.

An Irishman can abstain from corned beef, Guinness, and chocolate shamrocks on St. Patrick’s Day. Poor St. Patrick might be mightily embarrassed when people beseech the Church to say it’s okay for them to have corned beef on St. Patrick’s Day, although it’s a Lent Friday. And what happens? The Church says it’s okay. Is that okay? Yes, that’s okay. These are just some of those “human regulations” anyway. If people need their corned beef even on a Lent Friday, and good Catholic butchers, shopkeepers, and publicans are depending on selling the usual amounts of that, let’s not make the matter more important than it really is. How important is it? Well, if people are taking it to the Church and begging for relief, you might well and with good reason beg to differ, but you can’t tell them that’s not important. Better to have God ask, “Why did you let people eat corned beef on a Lent Friday?” than “Why didn’t you let them?” The former rhetorical question is easier to answer than the latter.  

When Lent becomes an exhausting ordeal, it’s not because of the Church, which actually makes Lent easy. People between 18 and 60 are supposed to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, although one can observe that and still have three decent meals. We’re also not supposed to eat meat on Fridays. That’s really it.

As a 52-year-old, it occurs to me: only (God willing) seven more years of Lent? Is the AARP that powerful? Maybe I should join!

The Church has plenty of suggestions. We’re encouraged to abstain from meat every day of Lent, and every Friday, and emphasize prayer and almsgiving. Most well-spent is the time we use cultivating awareness of our complete dependence on God, and placing ourselves (poor as we might realize we, someway or other, truly are) in solidarity with the people commonly known as “the poor.” We could resolve to be consequently and practically mindful and productive throughout all the year. 

Instead of merely admiring the plastic baby Jesus in its crib, we can see the babies and families in shabby, shady circumstances, and try to help these brother and sisters of the real Jesus and ourselves. Instead of merely pondering the Resurrection, we can intervene on behalf of those seemingly condemned to merely suffer without hope in this life. 

We can make Lent complicated, although the Church keeps it simple. We live complicated lives, and our Church is complicated, but God keeps these essentials simple: love God, love your neighbor, and love yourself (which, of course, is complicated)!