
“Happy Little Accidents” also approaches philosophy as a practice of creating scenes of desire, staging a vision of a future, a way of being, a mode of relation – as attractive and worthy.

But academics usually wish for more. We fantasize about some audience scattered in the future who will not just read what we write but do something with it, who will see and feel that our words and ideas carry an energy or force that calls for more to be said, more to be thought, more to be created, even if it is critical.

The picture painted here, especially by the verses of the Psalm not included in the lectionary reading (Psalm 104:1-23) is an astonishing vision of the ubiquity of the Creator within their creation, directly immersed within the moment-by-moment dance of life in its most intimate, even quotidian – eating, drinking, growing, building, nesting: these are the tasks of home and family. Divine empathy for daily life, in its glorious diversity, for everything that is alive.

Regardless of whether we live in the shadow of volcanoes or glaciers, we can see and know that God is at work in the awesome and majestic unfolding of creation. The same divine sovereignty that moves mountains can move human hearts toward the kin-dom—if we have eyes to see and courage to act.

Priests, in order to become mayors, had to be viewed as lovers. So, the mayor-priest is a ‘lover’ in multiple senses. He has to embody God’s love. He has to perform paternal love. He has to signal to society that he is also, very likely – albeit in secret – to be a good sexual lover as well.