OK, so it’s October now and it’s starting to get cold again and dark earlier. Summer is over. It’s a good time to think about times of taking.

The October Atlantic Magazine has an interesting fiction piece about a guy who BASE jumps off the Gateway Arch in St. Louis during the night. He gets into a relationship with a college girl who wants to become a BASE jumper in order to deal with her fears. Toward the end of the story when the relationship is falling apart, the guy concludes “it’s a time when things are taken away”. He’s having a big thought about life right then. Zen-man that he is, he realizes that things run in streaks. Sometimes life gives us plenty of good things, and sometimes the good things are taken from us whether we like it or not.

What kinds of things? Friends, lovers, money, jobs, cars, favorite hangouts, our good times, our health, eventually our lives. The theory here is that there’s some sort of cosmic force at work, something much bigger than all of us, something that variously gives and takes from us throughout the course of our lives.

Here are a few manifestations of this theory. In this past week’s West Wing (TV show), President Bartlet / Martin Sheen was reunited with his daughter Zoey after she was kidnapped by terrorists. Bartlet had temporarily given up his office during the crisis (to John Goodman, for Pete’s sake!), but he was now back in command. In his “I’m back” speech to the nation, he used the old line about God giving and God taking away. Furthermore, there’s the Old Testament book of Ecclesiates, saying there is a time to seek and a time to lose (recall the lyrics of the 1960s Byrds song “Turn Turn Turn”). So, the idea has been around for awhile.

I think this is a good way of looking at life. You might as well accept that there are times of ecstasy when much is given to you, and there are painful times when much that you value is taken away. Perhaps all that you value will be snatched away … nothing is secure. And when the time of taking comes, there isn’t much you can do to stop it. All you’ve got at that point is damage control, and hopefully some faith. Faith that the times of giving will come back someday, somehow, if your faith can persevere. But no, it sure ain’t easy or fun.