The other day

Jami told me that someone she knew found my site by looking up references to Karl Barth. I was astonished to find my Annunciation on one of the first few pages of google image search for Annunciation the other day. I feel almost like I should apologize. My plea for comments the other day brought a comment from Bob - Thanks man. Please decipher my e-mail address and send me a note.
I watch the History channel from time to time now. This morning someone was searching for the ark of the covenant. He went down the Nile, through the Yukon, into the Marianas Trench, tunneled beneath the Zugspitz: all to no purpose. In one frame of the video I could make out the shadow of the ark behind a tree. Yes, the ark of the covenant had been following him the whole time. I have heard rumor that the ark has been spotted at the Sands in Vegas, listening to Sinatra in the 60s, at the 69 world series, and recently at the opening of a water theme park in Orlando. That ark's a slippery character.
This show was followed by a search for the garden of Eden. It took them 30 minutes to quit looking for an actual garden and begin a discussion of paleogeology and the origins of agriculture. It is intriguing how Genesis echoes Babylonian stories tied into some primitive memory of sea level rising. God forbid though that we don't take Genesis as ancient etiology for how things got this way as understood by nomadic peoples whose idea of the world is 200 square miles at the most, and not as verifiable scientific writing detailing the origin of the cosmos and humanity. The Bible reflects an ancient understanding of the cosmos where heaven and earth were proximate to each other and where all creation was filled with intelligence and light (the terrestrial night being an effect of the moon's shadow blotting out the light of the sun (that is, if one could get beyond the orbit of the moon, one would perceive a celestial dance on golden fields, as all creation tended to rise as it was perfected, toward the unmoved mover). I know that my explanation of ancient cosmology is very Greek, but it is closer closer to what obtained in ancient Babylon than what we know today. Today we need to take a hard look at Genesis in light of a cosmology that finds us really alone in the universe. Between us and the nearest habitable planet is a vast cold distance, not filled with dancing intelligences, not rising as it tends toward perfection. This is good, I think. I find the way the universe actually is to be more in keeping with creation ex nililo. We are utterly dependent on God and desperate that there be a God who is loving and able to meet us in our anxieties. Out of all the vast nothingness of space, here we are. Sure one might suppose that we're not alone in the universe, but no one believes that: otherwise we wouldn't scoff at alien abduction stories. Jung hypothesized that alien abduction stories were the result of technology becoming the new religion. People desire connection with the other, and with the demise of organized religion, they projected this desire onto abduction by technologically sophisticated beings. In playing out these stories the act of imagination was so involved that the experience had the feel of reality.
Out of a vast nothingness, here we are, creating, living, loving, dying, generation after generation, our efforts marred by sin, by anxiety, by misunderstanding and a lack of forgiveness, a lack of love. But we're here.
There's a wonderful essay in the April Harper's about faith. I recommend it. In fact the whole issue had items of interest for me, including a fine review of the life of WG Sebald, the German author who taught in England.