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Saturday, April 09, 2005
SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2005
YESTERDAY'S WILDFLOWERS
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SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2005
God and String Theory
Yesterday I watched this truly amazing PBS series in three parts called "The Elegant Universe." It's spellbinding and very hard to pull yourself away once you've started watching it. It is designed for understanding by lay people and they did a fantastic job at making it accessible. It also contains interviews with some of the best physicists in the world, all speaking in very understandable terms. You can view it all in streaming video on the web. Click here.
That being said, I have for the longest time been fascinated - I mean fascinated - by the limits of the scientific imagination, and by the ability of these brilliant, brilliant people to block out larger questions, as if they simply didn't exist. I remember at a young age being told the atom was the smallest thing in the universe, and wondering how that could be because if you cut an atom in half you'd have something smaller. But physicists never addressed that question. Then they admitted that there were quarks, which were smaller than atoms, but asserted that these were the smallest things in the universe. Same question - what if you cut a quark in half?
The PBS series talks about string theory. Strings are now theorized to be the smallest things in the universe - far smaller than an atom. This is all still very theoretical and the strings are so tiny (If an atom were the size of the universe, a string would be the size of a tree on the earth - pretty small, huh?) that they cannot be observed and their existence cannot yet be proven or disproved. (Hey, what if you cut a string in half?) Anyway, they talk about this new thing called M theory which posits that the strings can be stretched to huge dimensions, (called membranes, or "branes," for short) like the size of the universe, and that there may well be entire other universes living next to us in other branes - exact duplicates of ourselves. I mean it's really fascinating stuff. And the fact that its physicists talking about it and not UFO theorists makes it really compelling.
Well anyway, one of the physicists is talking about the Big Bang, and he asks, "where did it come from?" He doesn't like the idea, nor do his colleagues, nor do I, that it comes from nothing. So they've started thinking about how string theory might explain the genesis of the Big Bang. They theorize that it could be the result of two branes colliding with one another.
Here's where these people fascinate me. OK, so let's say the big unexplainable Big Bang came from the collision of two branes. You are then being stared down by yet another question. Where on earth did the branes come from? Or for that matter, where did these little strings come from that form the branes?
This to me seems to be the best evidence for the reality of God. No matter how many questions the physicists answer, there will always be that larger contextual question that can never be answered. When they finally say, "this - this is the thing that started it all - we have a unified theory of the universe," (which would be great, by the way) they will still have the question, "OK, but where did this thing come from?" This mystery, it seems to me, is God. God is the question itself. God is the larger context. And the more you figure out, the larger God gets. Which has its own implications. By no means am I saying the theologians, who eliminate all scientific thought, have the answers. I mean, I have to credit the scientitsts. It is because of all their work that you get closer and closer to a true awareness of God. God is not a guy in a white beard. God is not a mind. God is not a person. In fact, "God" is not such a great word, because it is so associated with a person, a deity, a thing, as opposed to all things, or mystery itself. God is a mystery, and the more you know about the cosmos, the more mysterious God gets. Cool.
Now if mystery is the most powerful thing in the cosmos, it means we ought not pay so much homage to certainty. If we stop adoring certainty, as the theologians, and the politicians do, (and often the scientitsts, although at least they have some data) and start adoring mystery, it opens the door to possibility. Everything is possible in God's cosmos. The end of hunger, the end of AIDS, human joy, and so so much more, on the most impossible timelines. To honor this notion is to honor the possibility and the mystery of God.
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Thursday, April 07, 2005
FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 2005
We Can All Be Great
It is interesting to watch the news anchors on MSNBC and FOX and CNN portray John Paul II as a man of peace who brought the world together. He is given mythical status, and already he is being called John Paul the Great. It is not for me to say how much he was or was not a man of peace. He certainly seemed to be profoundly spiritual. As for bringing the world together, one doesn't feel that way if they are gay, as I am. I guess I would have to eliminate myself from the picture in order to adopt that view, but I feel a profound lack of desire to move myself from the picture - the picture being the world.
But none of this is what I find interesting. What I find interesting is the great divide being created by the media, between "John Paul the Great," and the rest of us. If they truly believe he was a man of peace who brought the world together, then by mythologizing him they are excusing themselves, and the rest of us, from being anything like him. He is great. We are not. By default this then excuses humanity for its lack of commitment to peace, and its lack of ability to come together. We elevate people of courage and inspiration to hero status so that we are excused from emulating them. I have always had this profound sense that just because we admire our heroes doesn't mean they admire us. Our admiration is all too often a substitute for emulation.
I am reminded today, for a number of reasons, of my favorite quotation in the whole world:
After they had searched all the stars in the universe and all of the planets around each sun, they realized they were alone, and they were glad, because they now knew they would have to become all of the things they had hoped to find.
- Lanford Wilson
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THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2005
Reminders
Just finished a book by Steve Hagen, a Zen priest, entitled, "Buddhism Plain & Simple." The need to be reminded of the things in this book - to breathe, to use right speech, to stop resisting what is and instead go with what is, cannot be overstated. I could read this book over again ever day for the rest of my life and it would not bee too much reminder. We think that we read a book on spirituality or meditation and that's enough. We wonder, ten days later, why we're feeling the same old way, and we say that ultimately the book made no difference. I think we need to put reminders about how to live an enlightened life in front of ourselves constantly. God knows the world puts reminders about how NOT to live an enlightened life in front of us constantly. What is there to balance it if we are not proactive ourselves? What possible chance do we have to live serenely if we don't load ourselves up with support? This was a wonderful excerpt from Buddha I found in the book that I thought I would share with you. I personally found it very inspiring:
They speak the truth, are devoted to the truth, reliable, worthy of confidence...They never knowingly deceive others for the sake of their own advantage...What they have heard here, they do not repeat there, so as to cause dissension there...Thus they unite those that are divided, and those that are united they encourage. Concord gladdens them, they delight and rejoice in concord; and it is concord that they spread by their words. They avoid harsh language and speak such words as are gentle, soothing to the ear, loving, going to the heart, courteous and dear, and agreeable to many. They avoid vain talk and speak at the right time, in accordance with facts, speak what is useful, speak about right wisdom and right practice; their speech is like a treasure, at the right moment accompanied by arguments, moderate and full of sense. Ahh, I have so far to go to real wisdom it seems sometimes, but I am making a tiny bit of progress...
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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 2005
Commonality
There are 22 ongoing significant armed conflicts in the world, according to the Defense Monitor. They span the globe from Uganda to Algeria to India to Israel to Columbia to the Philippines. Of these, the publication lists religion as a contributing factor in seven. Other causes listed include, economic conflict, control of power, desire for independence, drug trade, and ethnic issues. So, at least in this age, we seem to go to war over differences in the way we think about God, differences in the way we think about politics, differences in wealth, and differences in skin color. It should be no mystery to us that we need to find our commonality. To my knowledge, there are no people currently at war with one another over what they have in common.
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Monday, April 04, 2005
TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2005
If We Want to Change the World
If we want to change the world we must have the courage to say so. We cannot have the desire to transform the world deep in our hearts, but give voice ever only to small measures. We cannot have world peace in our hearts and then be willing only to say that we want to elect John Kerry President, when he wanted as big a military budget as the President. We cannot have the end of world hunger in our hearts and never tell anyone about it, or say only that we are appalled by cutbacks in social programs.
There is no earthly reason we cannot all together change this world of ours in the most fundamental ways. There is no good reason we cannot have joy instead of fear everywhere. But we must begin to tell the truth about it - cease our shying entirely away from verbalizing it for fear that we will be ridiculed. Someone said it's pretty hard to score if you don't have a goal. If this be our goal we must be courageous enough to say so. This is the first step.
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Sunday, April 03, 2005
MONDAY, APRIL 4, 2005
Kindness and Possibility
The scenes of millions of people gathered in groups large and small all around the world, singing and praying in response to the death of the Pope is touching. I recall being a kid in Disneyland on the 4th of July in 1976 - the bicentennial - and tens of thousands of strangers, most American, some not, some Republican, some Democrat, some for gun control, some against, all strangers to one another, singing "God Bless America" with one another, tears rolling down their faces. This kind of scene repeated itself often on Pallotta TeamWorks' AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Day events. People communed withy one another for a brief period of time. They were kind to one another. They were bound to one another by a goal much larger than their differences. They sang together. These scenes and experiences are a glimpse at what is possible in the world. We do not need anything much more complex than a global call to human kindness, and a vision of life so overwhelming that it makes our differences with one another seem, not just insignificant, but antithetical to our common happiness. Such a vision is not difficult to articulate. It includes clean water and food for everyone, a home for everyone, an education for everyone, a job for everyone, and the pursuit of a number of other impossible international goals to light it all up. Possibility and kindness, kindness and possibility. These are the things the world has too little of. Whatever created this cosmos also created within us the ability - indeed the need - to dream. It is waiting for us to exercise that capability. We are destroying ourselves because we are not expressing ourselves in the way in which we were created. Humility does not mean that we do not reach for the stars. Humility means that we do. When your creator endows you with the ability to reach for the stars and you do not, it cannot be called anything other than arrogance - an affront to the miracle of our own lives. We must set about the pursuit of a bold and daring project that recognizes this.
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SATURDAY / SUNDAY, APRIL 2ND AND 3RD
The Mystery of Life Is Enough
"Man is manifestly not the measure of all things. The universe is shot through with mystery. The very fact of its being, and of our own, is a mystery absolute, and the only miracle worthy of the name. The consciousness that animates us is itself central to this mystery and the ground for any experience we might wish to call "spiritual." No myths need be embraced for us to commune with the profundity of our circumstance. No personal God need be worshipped for us to live in awe at the beauty and immensity of creation. No tribal fictions need be rehearsed for us to realize, one fine day, that we do, in fact, love our neighbors, that our happiness is inextricable from their own, and that our interdependence demands that people everywhere be given the opportunity to flourish. The days of our religious identities are clearly numbered. Whether the days of civilization itself are numbered would seem to depend, rather too much, on how soon we realize this."
- Sam Harris, "The End of Faith"
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