A 2006 study about information noted that in the year 2000, 37k times more information was created than was held by the library of congress. Three years later the annual addition of information was nearly 100k times the information held by that same library of congress.

For major world events, information comes to us at amazing speeds - from 2.7 miles per hour by horse in 1805, to 247 mph in 1891 to 204,000 mph today. Google, bing, dogpile and alta vista help us search. Smartphones, blackberry, droid, iphone, can accept it anywhere. We have myspace,twitter, scipe, facebook, youtube, and other ways to connect us and our information.

How do we sift through it all to find what matters most? What guides us in that search for meaning that connects us with the God that made us and with each other?

Today's gospel is the ending of the Sermon on the Mount. Three chapters of Mathew's gospel that begin with the teaching about the Beattitudes and ends with a gut check about whether we've built our life's foundation in the revelation of who god is and what he knows to be how are lives need to be lived:

My friends, over the past several weeks we have been taught:

The values of god - mercy, meekness, humility, peacemaking

Who we are - light and salt

Jesus said: Violence is pointless. Forgiveness is freedom. Purity is about how we eat, pray, and love. That commitment to god means building our foundation for life in the teachings of Jesus Christ and living as he taught. If we were allowed to hold onto only a few pages that would give us what we needed to live, we should tear out the three chapters of Mathew's Sermon on the Mount, stuff them in our pockets and read them every day.

Robert Fuhlgum: minister/artist/educator wrote a book that was like a Sermon on the Mount: "Everything I Ever Needed to Learn I Learned in Kindergarten."

He said most of what I really needed to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.

These are the things I learned: share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work some every day.

Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

And then remember the book Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look . Everything you need to know is in there somewhere: the golden rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology and politics and sane living.

Think of what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true: no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

There was someone from our parish who took others by the hand and stuck to them as they grew to become what god intended for them to be. Nancy Sheehan was a woman of faith who lived the three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount as a wife and mother, as an educator, and an active member of communities including St. Thomas, military veterans, the Red Cross, St. Francis hospital. But the community for which she showed her deepest passion was the girl scouts. She took seriously her role in lifting up girls and young women to understand live their wonderful dignity, their god given gifts, and their responsibility to make a difference.

Nancy became ill suddenly and surprisingly, quickly passed away a few weeks ago. There were 61 tributes posted on the obituary website from around the world - mostly from women who credit who they are, who they are becoming in large part to Nancy's impact in their lives.

One quote said it best: "because of Nancy, a girl makes a promise and keeps it. Because of Nancy, a girl learns a law and lives it. Because of Nancy, a girl goes into the world and changes it. Because of you...Nancy Sheehan, a true sister to every girl scout."

Over the last two thousand years information, knowledge, and wisdom have exploded in our lives. None of it is more powerful and more important than three small chapters in one important book. And nothing on You Tube will ever capture a life lived by those pages.