When Bro. Ambrose¹ and John Fegenbush² took a pick-up truck to go visit a prisoner in Louisville a while back, they had no idea that they were about to take part in an elaborate drama involving superb planning. For, as they ascended the hill beyond the bridge before Bardstown — a narrow road with no shoulders, be it noted — descending the hill from the opposite direction a speeding car crossed the center line and headed directly for the pick-up. They hit head-on. An epileptic had experienced a seizure and was out of control. He was killed and Brother Ambrose seriously hurt. Despite a larynx shattered by the windshield, he recovered his voice. This incident could never have been planned and executed by human design. Too complex. Had Brother left 10 seconds earlier, 10 seconds later, it would never have happened.

What is this? We call it an accident. That explains nothing. The only apt term is to call it whimsical: a refined blend of human will and divine power. To call it a whim means God did not deliberately arrange it. And yet it is within His divine governing of the universe, His Providence.

We encounter this divine whim repeatedly. The drag net cast into the sea for fish is a haphazard venture, gathering in whatever is in the deep, the unwanted going back into the sea. Jesus compares it to the End when all humankind will be gathered and subject to judgment. So too the pearl the merchant stumbles on in a routine cover of the market. Or the man working the field who inadvertently unearths a golden vessel. Common to all these is a note of whimsy, the accidental, the circumstantial, the haphazard.

This is a profound mystery to us all. The fortuitous aspect of so much of life is distressing. We endeavor to cover every eventuality and somehow never quite succeed. We have our essential freedom on the one hand and on the other the overwhelming power of an omnipotent God in control of the universe. We cannot succumb to some fatalistic view of life, nor can we think there is no basic plan or order.

I think that perhaps the point of these parables given us today is to bring to the forefront the need to acknowledge this situation and in some way come to terms with it.

One can think of a couple dancing. It is something beautiful when the one is a capable  leader, the other perfectly follows. It is not domination, one over the other; it is dialog, yet dialog with direction and pattern.

Our subjection to God cannot be supine, craven. It is the encounter of free man with free God. When love is at the heart of the relationship, the results are blessed, for His will is done and the human attains full statue in holiness.

It may help some to see the quality of whim in the divine since we witness so much that makes no sense, certainly from our point of view. The calamities of life in natural forces alone are often hard to accept. When the result of human evil sets out on a path of hatred, persecution, violence and destruction, war itself, most human kind remain numb, mute before realities too difficult to digest. Divine whim indeed.

So we come to the problem of evil. And human freedom: the great struggle between the powers of good and the powers of darkness. Sometimes the contours of the struggle are very evident. And we cry out to God. All suffering awakens us to this insight.

But day to day in the business of living, the ultimate pattern is hidden as we deal with left-overs, as it were, fragments washed on the beach from some distant battles, frustrations, trouble, sickness and death, fire and famine, disasters that form the bulk of the news. Not sin and evil specifically, but in some remote way connected.

And this is where we are hard pressed in faith: to trust an ever-loving Lord and God, to refuse bitterness, despair, hate. "Thy will be done." And then we try to get on with life.

This is the common heroism of the common man, whether he be a Kennedy or the man across the street. Indeed, it is worth asking yourself: and how do I cope with a God so whimsical? And when last did I deal with Him in that mode?   Amen.

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1  Of Mexican nationality, Bro. Ambrose, now in his 70's, recovered fully from his accident and is still very active in the Gethsemani community as one of its cooks, an all around handy-man and serves also on the Gethsemani charity committee, often himself taking personal care of needy neighbors in the vicinity.

2 John Fegenbush is a friend and part-time helper of Bro. Ambrose and of the Gethsemani community which he often visits.