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November 21, 2007
In Consideration of Wood Beams
Last night I was lying in bed waiting for Kayla, staring at the wood beams and letting my mind race in the most random of ways.
I was trying to get my mind around God; about what exactly He is and what, if anything, He has to do with me. I swing between the extremes of despising and admiring those people who are so sure of their relation to Him. The individuals or institutions who quote the Bible as an inerrant oracle to the blinding divine.
Even from an early age I always had a problem with the idea of the Bible, not the book itself or even what it said but rather that it was The Word of God. I remember asking in Sunday school if there were going to be any more books added the Bible; Genesis was written so far in advance of Revelation and I figured there could be a Tom or Susan out there who might have something to add.
The answer I was always given, from multiple independent sources, was 'no'. Why? I mean really, why? And not even 'why' but 'how' as well, how did these people know that God put down a strict deadline after John got finished writing his fantasy epic on Patmos? This was troubling not because I wanted more stuff added to the Bible but because the Bible wasn't a word of God it was The Word of God and that meant God was done speaking.
The entire mystery of God was there, right in front of me, bound in leather and printed in Black and red.
It was depressing. Did He have nothing more to say?
Albert Einstein, in his essay Becoming a Freethinker and a Scientist, said, "Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking." This was the view of the world, and by extension 'God', that I instinctively had. There's always more to discover and this is what I was doing while lying on my bed, waiting for Kayla, staring at the knotted wood of the ceiling beams, contemplating the nails that held them in place and the atoms that stitched it all together.
And for just a moment the corners of reality were curled back and I got a fleeting glimpse of the terrifying infinity that lay beyond. I thought of Moses, up on the mountain top, as he saw but the shadow of God pass by or the assistants of the Levite priests, sweaty and scared, watching as the curtains to the holiest of holies were pushed aside, gripped in fear, wondering at the great unknown that lay hidden inside.
Then Kayla came upstairs and asked what I was doing.
"Trying to figure out the universe."
She laughed at me and then scrunched up her face into the type of smile that happens when a child says something unexpectedly adult and, by extension, cute. And all in a moment my mind raced and I thought back to what I had written earlier in my journal:
Even now as I write I am more unsettled, jangled and nerved by the liquid ground under my feet. What is truth? To love and be loved. To discover the source of love and cling to it. You, this God I've been writing and talking to for so many years, I believe you are that source. I want to know you more. I am seeking, let me find you; I am knocking, let me in; I am asking, please give.
I started to think about creation, from quarks to atoms to the largest of stars to the myriad galaxies in the milky way to beyond. All this matter, all this energy and I have the ability to see and consider it all. But what am I to do?
Love. Love and be loved. We all have compasses, some call them morals, others religious beliefs, others what you 'ought' to do. But at the core, as a human being I believe it is my charge to love and, if I do, I will be headed in the right direction and eventually arrive at my destination of infinity.
And just as a sailor will sometimes only see water and sky, I will live with the questions and trust that once I reach dry land they'll all be sorted out.
Posted by Jon at November 21, 2007 04:49 AM