As I have considered an “evolved god” in a parallel universe, one problem arises: How do you explain the miracles where various persons (Passover angel, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, et al) acting as agents of god alter the “natural order” unless god is somehow in control of (rather than controlled by) the universe? I happen to believe the historical record that the miracles actually did occur, so I have to retreat from my “evolved god” position. Yet, there is a sense in which the “creator god” allows the spiritual “parallel universe” to be perceived and evolved by people in various cultures at successive times according to what (their needs, god’s interests, random events)? I guess, to proceed further, I’ll need to read some Karen Armstrong and others.
Obviously, I’m not a theologian.
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The year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearled;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his Heaven –
(with the billions of innocents
who’ve died of hunger, poverty,
disease, and injustice)
All’s right with the world!
—Browning in Pippa Passes
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Monday, November 9, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
The Parallel Universe -- imagine
“god” lives in a parallel universe not limited by time and space. Since there is no “time” in the way we think of it (in a linear manner), of course, “god” knows everything that has happened (since god began*) and “will happen” though “god” doesn’t think of it as something occuring in the future, since there is no future with “god”, only the eternal present. The question is not whether “god” knows but why the “loving god” we worship doesn’t intervene in the world as we know it when people do bad things. I don’t know the answer to that. Perhaps there is a tug of war going on in this parallel universe of which we only have fleeting glimpses.
*imagine the possibility that in the evolution of the world there evoved not only humankind with opposing thumb and large brain capable of planning and all the rest, but also there evolved a spiritual parallel world populated by the spirits of those who died and the phenomenon of gods with real power and the ability to communicate (even via real angels and a real Jesus “son of god”) with humankind (be they judaeo christian, muslim, hindu, buddhist, or animist.) This kind of thinking is almost science fiction. I’ve searched somewhat to see what kind of belief this is but haven’t come up with a name. I can still be thankful for the world as it is, whether created or not. It’s all a great mystery.
*imagine the possibility that in the evolution of the world there evoved not only humankind with opposing thumb and large brain capable of planning and all the rest, but also there evolved a spiritual parallel world populated by the spirits of those who died and the phenomenon of gods with real power and the ability to communicate (even via real angels and a real Jesus “son of god”) with humankind (be they judaeo christian, muslim, hindu, buddhist, or animist.) This kind of thinking is almost science fiction. I’ve searched somewhat to see what kind of belief this is but haven’t come up with a name. I can still be thankful for the world as it is, whether created or not. It’s all a great mystery.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Southern Fatalism
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While sweeping the floor this morning I had some thoughts on Southern fatalism after reading the first couple chapters of Pat Conroy’s new book last night:
Lee invoked God’s will the night before the third day of Gettysburg and the ill-fated Pickett’s charge but took blame for the bad outcome himself: “It’s all my fault.”
92 yo lady in West Virginia:
“If you’re destined to hang you’ll never drown, so let the big cat jump.”
“Just when you think it’s ok, that’s when it will happen.” – TV show in the 50’s about a terrorist warning a bomb had been placed on an airplane. After a frantic search for the bomb, the hero finally figured out the meaning of the terrorist’s quote: the bomb was attached to the landing wheels.
James 4:13-15
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’” [Lord willing and the creek don’t rise]
Pat Conroy (South of Broad)
“…my mother’s world seemed disconsolate and tragic before she really knew how tragic life could be. Once she learned that no life could avoid the consequences of tragedy, she softened into an ascetic’s acknowledgment of the illusory nature of life. She became a true believer in the rude awakening.”
“Nothing happens by accident. I learned this the hard way…”
“..fate comes at you cat-footed, unavoidable, and bloodthirsty. The moment you are born your death is foretold by your newly minted cells…Death lives in each one of us and begins its countdown on our birthdays and makes its rough entrance at the last hour and the perfect time.”
“It would take a great portion of my time as an adult before I realized that tragedy was hurled freely into everyone’s life as though it were a cheap newspaper advertising porno shops an strip shows thrown into an overgrown yard.”
And this is just the first two chapters!
There is this positive sentence:
“But I had come back to Him, and that is part of my story.”
The book may have some hope after all, and, like Claypool, he may find some comfort in the gift of life.
Psalm 1
Happy the one who doesn’t sit around with the cynics….
He’s like the tree planted by the rivers of water….
Everything he does will prosper (because God is with him.)
Really? Unfortunately, our southern sense of fatalism seems to trump the optimistic side of life and leaves that for the tele-evangelists to promulgate.
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.
While sweeping the floor this morning I had some thoughts on Southern fatalism after reading the first couple chapters of Pat Conroy’s new book last night:
Lee invoked God’s will the night before the third day of Gettysburg and the ill-fated Pickett’s charge but took blame for the bad outcome himself: “It’s all my fault.”
92 yo lady in West Virginia:
“If you’re destined to hang you’ll never drown, so let the big cat jump.”
“Just when you think it’s ok, that’s when it will happen.” – TV show in the 50’s about a terrorist warning a bomb had been placed on an airplane. After a frantic search for the bomb, the hero finally figured out the meaning of the terrorist’s quote: the bomb was attached to the landing wheels.
James 4:13-15
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.’” [Lord willing and the creek don’t rise]
Pat Conroy (South of Broad)
“…my mother’s world seemed disconsolate and tragic before she really knew how tragic life could be. Once she learned that no life could avoid the consequences of tragedy, she softened into an ascetic’s acknowledgment of the illusory nature of life. She became a true believer in the rude awakening.”
“Nothing happens by accident. I learned this the hard way…”
“..fate comes at you cat-footed, unavoidable, and bloodthirsty. The moment you are born your death is foretold by your newly minted cells…Death lives in each one of us and begins its countdown on our birthdays and makes its rough entrance at the last hour and the perfect time.”
“It would take a great portion of my time as an adult before I realized that tragedy was hurled freely into everyone’s life as though it were a cheap newspaper advertising porno shops an strip shows thrown into an overgrown yard.”
And this is just the first two chapters!
There is this positive sentence:
“But I had come back to Him, and that is part of my story.”
The book may have some hope after all, and, like Claypool, he may find some comfort in the gift of life.
Psalm 1
Happy the one who doesn’t sit around with the cynics….
He’s like the tree planted by the rivers of water….
Everything he does will prosper (because God is with him.)
Really? Unfortunately, our southern sense of fatalism seems to trump the optimistic side of life and leaves that for the tele-evangelists to promulgate.
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Monday, August 31, 2009
Sidney Lanier poems
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A Song Of The Future.
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea:
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
Go, trembling song,
And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love
Barnacles
My soul is sailing through the sea,
But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.
The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
About my soul.
The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole
And hindereth me from sailing!
Old Past let go, and drop i' the sea
Till fathomless waters cover thee!
For I am living but thou art dead;
Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
The Day to find.
Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind,
I needs must hurry with the wind
And trim me best for sailing.
I sent these to Matt in early July 2009
.
.
A Song Of The Future.
Ark of my hopes, Ark of my dreams;
Sweep lordly o'er the drowned Past,
Fly glittering through the sun's strange beams;
Sail fast, sail fast.
Breaths of new buds from off some drying lea
With news about the Future scent the sea:
My brain is beating like the heart of Haste:
I'll loose me a bird upon this Present waste;
Go, trembling song,
And stay not long; oh, stay not long:
Thou'rt only a gray and sober dove,
But thine eye is faith and thy wing is love
Barnacles
My soul is sailing through the sea,
But the Past is heavy and hindereth me.
The Past hath crusted cumbrous shells
That hold the flesh of cold sea-mells
About my soul.
The huge waves wash, the high waves roll,
Each barnacle clingeth and worketh dole
And hindereth me from sailing!
Old Past let go, and drop i' the sea
Till fathomless waters cover thee!
For I am living but thou art dead;
Thou drawest back, I strive ahead
The Day to find.
Thy shells unbind! Night comes behind,
I needs must hurry with the wind
And trim me best for sailing.
I sent these to Matt in early July 2009
.
.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Beauty
"Lust not after her beauty in thine heart;
neither let her take thee with her eyelids."
--Proverbs 6:25 (this from Solomon who had some 600 concubines and many hundred wives! I guess he should know!)
"Beauty is the gift of God."
--Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V 18
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Rhodora
Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it. . .
Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, is intuition.
--D. H. Lawrence, Sex Versus Loveliness
neither let her take thee with her eyelids."
--Proverbs 6:25 (this from Solomon who had some 600 concubines and many hundred wives! I guess he should know!)
"Beauty is the gift of God."
--Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, V 18
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Rhodora
Beauty is a mystery. You can neither eat it nor make flannel out of it. . .
Sex and beauty are inseparable, like life and consciousness. And the intelligence which goes with sex and beauty, is intuition.
--D. H. Lawrence, Sex Versus Loveliness
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Thanks for 1988
With the loss to Notre Dame tonight, UK's win total stands at 1988, and many of those are memorable games for which we give thanks. The Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we'll start the countdown to the 2nd millennium in the fall of this year.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Boundaries
Make good choices everyday.
Respect the boundaries your parents and others determine for you: they're helping you to prevent weeds from crowding out the flowers of your life. Some pruning of the flowers also makes them more beautiful just as passing up all the distractions of life makes your life more fruitful.
---Dr. Adams
Respect the boundaries your parents and others determine for you: they're helping you to prevent weeds from crowding out the flowers of your life. Some pruning of the flowers also makes them more beautiful just as passing up all the distractions of life makes your life more fruitful.
---Dr. Adams
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