Garnished empty flasks; the bread of life.

I don't know much about the band Within Temptation, but listening to a cd today I relished the celtic-metal sound. There's such range between the choral heights and the heavy strummed chords on the electric bass. Some metal music I think of as dirty silver and black and red, but this I'd say is more of a midnight blue with touches of silver and brown. It lures the senses with the aura of magic and mystery. Simply, painfully, lovely voice contrasted with the subterranean growl of metal music.

There seem to be cultures of artists that recreate something that never was--a dark lacey celtic/gothic society, as if there was a time in the middle ages when gods swept shadows over the earth and the Lord of the Rings really happened and the air had a darkly satisfying chivalry cloaked in mists and witchcraft. Everything was sadly perfect. Hearts could speak across miles. Bleeding hearts, moonlight. Violins strain to say the truth that they are only subjects, not gods, nor spirits. The cry in the dark is worshipful of something unknown. You get the picture--from the same fantasy come vampire romances, slow dances with suppressed evil.

Today I listened to the cd and didn't think through the above (til now as I described it), but simply enjoyed the sounds; sound waves that are tall, deep, and wide. Frankly beautiful. I went about my business folding laundry and picking up on some words now and then. I felt a leaning towards overcast-Sunday-afternoon feeling, the feeling of searching, reaching, embracing for something astoundingly meaningful. This happens sometimes when I forget myself and try to lean on music (of any kind) instead of just enjoying it.

So I say I know very little about the band I was listening to, but what I observed was this. Musicians singing little folk ditties... or opera with an enormous pyrotechnic metal choir...are not only looking for satisfaction, but sharing that search. The music seems to promise satisfaction, but it's not the singer that's really satisfied, nor the audience. Even the music is never truly satisfied--no people can truly, completely, satisfy a song. But in the attempt, people stretch and grow. The harder they search, the deeper twists the pain that says just one melody away is the one big--very very very big--beautiful--answer to the emptiness exposed by unbridled fantasy.

I appreciate the series my pastor is preaching on Ecclesiastes. So far he has observed these things about Ecclesiastes. 1) The search for ultimate significance is real. 2) The things we generally do in that search are usually not bad (eating chocolate, coaching little league, parenting children), they are just empty-- of the final answers to life's questions. 3) Death is the test of this. You're going to die: whatever you accomplish, whatever you enjoy, doesn't stop death, and what you do dies with you--at best your children and grandchildren remember.

Someone on the radio, speaking on Ecclesiastes, listed the names of some people from 100, 50, 10 years ago who were extremely famous in their time. The names already meant nothing to me, and presumably nothing to most other listeners. If you live for your own legacy, futility will overtake you sooner or later and you'll experience bouts of terror at your insignificance.

Yet the sum of Ecclesiastes is not to reject good things in life. It is good to enjoy your life, but you'll find significance in fearing God and following His commandments. This is where a sense of home-and-dinner-on-the-table comes.

Using "Where the Wild Things Are" as a parable for Ecclesiastes, the pastor asked us to spend the week thinking, "What is my rumpus?" (Rumpus=hyperactive boy galumphing around with a bunch of tame monsters without mother telling him not to). Chances are we're not looking for meaning in bad things. Just in empty things.

Many dear people with longing hearts are afraid to believe in such a mighty God. The musical cry for meaning is its own evangelism. Am I the only one who feels so alone? Let me test the people around with an invocation of wildly lonely feelings. Do you feel it? can you fight it? Does meaningless keep you awake at night and asleep in the morning, or do you deafen yourself to the silence by self-discipline? Loneliness-- a silent religion. The emptiness, first feared, then explored, and never understood, becomes a vast deity to worship, news to spread. Perhaps in keeping with Nietzsche, 'When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead!'"

Empty, meaningless is everything under the sun--meaningless is a world that was never created but simply happened. Meaningless is an earth whose geometric center of a great empty universe is probably an illusion--as each human is caught midway between east and west horizons. Meaningless is everything if indeed there is no master.

But to humble oneself before Supreme authority--to be obedient to a good and fierce Father, to love and admire the Keeper of life, to love created things through the lens of admiration of the Creator----vanquishes the fear of the yawing black depth that is ... meaninglessness. You really don't need to be remembered on earth. The eternal Father remembers you. To the one who finds emptiness in the void, I say look not in the void and you will not find such emptiness. Fear God, follow His commands. The puzzle of life doesn't just fall into place when you do this, no! but neither need you fear the conundrum when you already know who wins in the end.