Vanity of vanities

Vanity of vanities, says the teacher. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity... all things are wearisome more than one can express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new?" It has already been in the ages before us...      Ecclesiastes 1. 2, 8-9

I opened my NRSV Bible this grey November afternoon, and I came upon Ecclesiastes, or Qoheleth, if you prefer. The preacher, or teacher, as he is named in the above passage. His words seem to be one of the lesser known books of the Bible, except for the famous passage about there being "a time to be born and a time to die..." that has been sung by many people and read at countless funerals.

A theologian/priest/cousin of mine (who also shares a few long-distance blood relatives with me) likes to talk about this passage when he sees me. Our common ancestral name, Prediger, translates from German to English as preacher; Qoheleth, if you prefer. My cousin is rather fond of Qoheleth, perhaps feeling a kinship to the world-weary preacher. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," my cousin likes to say. "There is nothing new under the sun."

When I was younger, I didn't think much of Qoheleth, or his comments. There was plenty new under the sun! New music, new ideas, new styles, new technologies, all sorts of new things! The human race was constantly reinventing things, as far as I could see... and the preacher, whoever he was, wasn't giving us nearly enough credit!

But now, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," is something of a mantra in my efforts to live simply. Who needs the latest and greatest of anything when it's only going to be made obsolete or replaced by something else in a matter of weeks? Better to avoid consumer culture as much as possible, as I am finite, and don't need to leave infinite possessions behind for my poor descendants -- or the landfill! And "there is nothing new under the sun" rings true when I hear my teenaged daughter's music. It reminds me of a lot of the stuff I listened to when I was her age.

"Nothing new under the sun" is also a consolation of sorts when it comes to my attempts at doing anything. God created it all before I ever did anything, so there's no pressure for me or anyone else to be deeply profound or super-intelligent or unbelievably inspiring in our "inventions" unless we listen to people who are determined to stress out humanity by insisting upon the "higher, farther, faster" mantra that is sure to burn us and our planet out before our time. How can we really improve upon the handiwork of the Creator of the Universe? By using up less of it. And if we walk more lightly in creation, we naturally enjoy ourselves more because we don't have to work so hard to burn out!

Qoheleth would probably laugh at the vanity of me moodling in cyberspace, and honestly, I laugh with him. This really is a pretty silly thing to do this late at night; a pretty silly thing to do, period. He's right, all is vanity, and I suspect he said what he did because he had a few years' wisdom behind him. Perhaps the fact that I'm starting to agree with him is a sign that maybe I'm getting a wee bit wiser myself.