Perfect Brightness of Hope

Today I woke, and was surprised to find that I wondered, even to pain, what the purpose of life is. Not particularly what the purpose of life has been, or what it should be, but what it is.

I distinctly recall the buoyancy of youth, when in sixth grade I crossed the weedy soccer field, knelt and crawled with muddy knees behind the alpine currant, and crossed my fingers into a hatchy prayer-pattern. I cried because I had considered my lean 5' 7 body as too old for my youth: I thought myself too past the page of innocence that Christ would have sat me on his knee when he came again.

Recently, quietly belabored by too much knowledge of life and lifelessness, love and lovelessness, I had my hand on his neck when he turned his gaze from driving. It wasn't difficult for him, so he gave me the answer I needed with a simple, "Who are your heroes? What do you value in them?"

Right now, I'm waiting for the closing phrase of the phrased song to stop, slowly disappearing into a stream of music to a stream of silent. I'm eating the work of a someone else's lifetime in a short 2.41 minutes of Ave Maria. Last week, I sat ten feet away from a professional soccer goalie and listened to a slew of profanity and personal degradation thrown from the fanbase, and watchd him turn his back and play the game. Yesterday, I read about my brother's love for his little growing family of four.

I think finally on the phrase that we must

...press forward with a perfect brightness of hope and a love of God and of all men...

and realize that life isn't about the number of mistakes we've made, or even the amount of service we've given. It isn't even so much about living, as it is living with integrity, somehow dedicated to a cause so intrinsically noble and emotionally expansive that we are driven insatiably toward goodness and truth and beauty by the singular pursuit of it.

Now, how to find that personal cause? That is the current meaning of life now.