Vanity of vanities (Fr. Ron Rolheiser)

   The biblical writer Qoheleth warned us that everything in this life is vanity:  Vanity of vanities, everything is vanity.  

   However, he uses the word vanity in a different sense than we do today.  For him, it does not connote a psychological narcissism or an unhealthy preoccupation with our appearance and persona.  Rather, for him, vanity simply means vapor, a passing mist, transience, impermanence, something that disappears too quickly.

  Experiencing that transience can give us a heartache, but it can also make us search more deeply inside all this impermanence for that which is permanent.

--Fr. Ron Rolheiser, Facebook, July 30, 2018

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