When God Gets Too Big

As a child my parents told me not to take more on my plate than I could eat. When I did, I dawdled at our table after everyone left, expected to finish my meal. I won’t make that mistake tomorrow as we celebrate Thanksgiving in America.

I’m aware of a similar dynamic as I have paused reading The Tao of Physics. Not only the science got a little too detailed for me, but the God in the details got too large, too impersonal and even frightening, more than I could “eat”! My bookmark with excerpts from Psalm 139 kept tempting me to abandon God’s incarnation in reality to welcome God’s intimate presence, “you who formed my inmost being, knit me together in my mother’s womb.” “Comfort food” theology, so to speak.

Maybe that’s why the ancient Hebrews chose to follow one God out of the pantheon of gods polytheism offered. Maybe that’s why the first Christians chose to follow Jesus out of the panoply of prophetic voices in Judaism. It was a matter of focus, a matter of admitting, in the words of Psalm 131:

My heart is not lifted up,

my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me.

I am now contemplating the Psalms in the 130’s, their uplifting poetry a pleasant contrast to dispassionately documented subatomic and cosmic interactions, though still filled with “signs and wonders” (Ps 135:9). I’ve been yearning to walk naked with God in the cool of the day in the Garden of Eden, or to share “the sympathizing tear” with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

This coming Sunday is traditionally the end of the Christian calendar, “Christ the King” Sunday, when Jesus is celebrated and elevated as sovereign of the universe. By the following Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent, we once again await his nativity, a baby born in a barn. Thus I’m following a pattern, perhaps, of being overwhelmed theologically and then discerning divinity in something tiny as an infant. God is indeed in the small things.

The Tao of Physics informed me, in the words of astronomer Fred Hoyle:

Present-day developments in cosmology are coming to suggest rather insistently that everyday conditions could not persist but for the distant parts of the Universe, that all our ideas of space and geometry would become entirely invalid if the distant parts of the Universe were taken away. Our everyday experience even down to the smallest details seems to be so closely integrated to the grand-scale features of the Universe that it is well-nigh impossible to contemplate the two being separated. [p 195-6]

And, addressing Yahweh, Psalm 138:3 reminds me:

On the day I called, you answered me,

you increased my strength of soul.

I once wrote a piece entitled “Advent Is a Time to Look for a Star.” It should not surprise us that the star of Bethlehem may portend an answer to a prayer like the psalmist’s.

Dear Readers,

Recently my visitors per post dropped from a couple thousand to around a hundred. Because most come from Facebook, I gather it has something to do with Facebook algorithms. Facebook would probably like me to pay to boost my posts, but I’ve never done that—it feels like “cheating,” and I couldn’t afford it anyway.

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

The Mythologies of Science and Religion

Photo of ruins in Jordan by Chris Glaser.

I’ve written before that I am at “that age” when you look for connections, a time late in life indicated by recent studies. Regular readers will know that, during my morning prayers these days, I’ve been slowly absorbing Fritjof Capra’s 1975 book, The Tao of Physics. I find physicist Capra’s writing more accessible than that of Stephen Hawking, though I wonder how dated his science may be today, even as he demonstrates a pretty thorough understanding of Eastern spirituality.

His recurrent theme is that Western science has come to similar conclusions as ancient, mystical Eastern philosophy. Among them, that reality is indivisible, that the observed cannot be separated from the observer, that a particular scientific analysis is not intrinsic in nature but a creation of the human mind.

Now along comes a New York Times magazine article entitled, “Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science,” about deconstructionist Latour’s similar conclusions about the nature of science after studying scientists in their “natural habitats,” much like a scientist might study other primates. In our time of pseudo-science and anti-science religionists dissing real science about climate change and evolution, philosopher Latour has recognized the danger of his work being misunderstood or worse, misused.

All this brought to mind a rather prescient conversation I created in one of my unpublished novels, the tongue-in-cheek Angus Dei – A John Boswell Mystery, written in 2002. Spiritual profiler Boswell, the Catholic narrator, is trying to find the one responsible for the death of Angus MacDonald, pastor of Primitive Presbyterian in Crowbar, Mississippi. He interviews various citizens, including science teacher Annie Hepburn, who describes Angus:

“His passion for God made him stupid, just like romantic love makes you blind to reality and prompts you to idealize the beloved. It makes us closer to the animals who breed by instinct rather than by reason. But humans bring reason into any relationship. We are not bound by blind passion, whether for a person, a country, or for God. Our passion is informed. Angus’s passion for God resisted information. His idealization of God required God to create the world as if by magic, in an instant, at most in seven days, rather than through arduous experimentation and a process known as evolution. Angus claimed it was as if I were suggesting God made the world by following a recipe, or worse, some haphazard, trial-and-error plan. If God made the world though a discernible process, then he was diminished, in Angus’s view.

“I, on the other hand, find the process so awesome that it made me more of a believer than any text of scripture ever could. The world itself is the best witness for this inspiration and yearning for life that we call God. By contrast, look how petty religion can be! They argue and divide over how to do Communion, like a bunch of obsessives with varying compulsions. Lately they’ve wasted a lot of time quibbling over whether homosexuality is right or wrong, as if love is only possible between a man and a woman. And they’ve always debated the merits of personal piety versus social responsibility, as if the two could be separated!”

I felt compelled to argue the other side, if only to hear her answer. I said, “But scientists argue over experimental procedure—their rituals. They disagree over what makes for healthy human relationships, including sexuality. And there’s always conflict between ‘pure science’ versus ethical responsibility.”

Annie paused, and smiled, and I could see that she was thinking. “That’s true,” she said at last. “Science is also a mythological framework in some ways, purporting to give meaning and order to what others see as random and chance. But what is revealed in the religion that we call ‘science’ I find ultimately more hopeful and helpful. Religion is too often caught up in the past, and both religion and science are held back if either is paralyzed by the old ways of doing things, the old ways of understanding things. The very nature of science calls for breaking boundaries, breaking the supposed rules.”

I thought of my own Catholic tradition, its very nature caught up in the past, but a past begun in the divine nature of a human being whom we believe modeled how to be a child of God, a past populated by venerable but vulnerable saints who followed the model, as well as powerful demons that didn’t, demons of conformity and cruelty, violence and division—the weeds within the harvest. And then I looked at Annie, and a thought came to mind that I dared not say, that would be highly inappropriate because it would unveil her own precious vulnerability. Just as Catholicism set up an altar to honor its lover, so she had set up an altar to honor hers, her dead husband—a side table adorned with fresh flowers and two candlesticks beneath his photograph, hanging on the wall. She too had an experience in the past of love so powerful that she also remained faithful, I thought to myself. But a true Southern gentleman or lady may only think such things, one doesn’t say them, trudging on people’s personal vulnerabilities for the sake of winning an argument. This is a Southern virtue that other Americans should emulate. Of course, then there would be less for the media, politicians, lawyers, and talk show hosts to exploit.

Annie continued, “Angus also hated breaking the rules. Beyond defending the only one that he thought could possibly satisfy his longing—God—he also was defending himself, his own fortress of beliefs that held him together in the chaos that’s in every person. He was afraid of letting go. And for him, removing one stone from his fortress would cause the whole thing to collapse.”

In the wake of the recent violence, my heart goes out to the Tree of Life synagogue and the beautiful Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA, which I visited years ago. I also stand in solidarity with Jewish communities everywhere in their grief and their anxiety over increasing anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks.

A reading for Halloween which seems particularly relevant these days: 

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

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Copyright © 2002 and 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Why Did We Evolve?

Plettenberg Bay, South Africa

Please consider last week’s post as prologue to today’s blog entry. As I rode through a South African wild game reserve a few weeks ago, “visiting” lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, and other species without barriers between them and me, learning how they interact with each other and their environment, the question came to me, “Why did we (humans) evolve?”

Other creations—geographical, geological, climate, plant, and fellow animals have their role to play in the ecology of Earth, but why were we “needed”? All of these creatures do quite well without us and, it could be argued, would do better without us.

Wade takes a photo of our shadows on the shore.

Longtime readers of this blog will remember how often I have tried to answer this question, stated in diverse ways from different perspectives for a variety of reasons. Over the ages, religion, culture, and science have become our tools to at least address or explore if not answer why we are here.

I know this question is “above my pay grade” and well beyond my education, as is probably true for everyone, yet I imagine almost every one of us has wondered about it from time to time, especially in youth and old age when life’s necessities do not take up so much of our time and energy. Maybe that’s our point: to be matter reflecting on itself.

But on the savannahs of Nambiti I came up with a reason that was only original when it was first told in the Genesis creation stories: that we have evolved to serve as stewards of this Garden, mindful (and I don’t use the term lightly) caretakers of terrestrial concerns. Neither original is the thought that our mindlessness when it comes to such concerns is our original and besetting sin.

The properties of a particle can be understood only in terms of its activity—of its interaction with the surrounding environment—and…the particle, therefore, cannot be seen as an isolated entity, but has to be understood as an integrated part of the whole.

As long as we are under the spell of maya and think that we are separated from our environment and can act independently, we are bound by karma. … To be free from the spell of maya, to break the bonds of karma, means to realize that all the phenomena we perceive with our senses are part of the same reality.  … This experience is called moksha, or ‘liberation’ in Hindu philosophy and it is the very essence of Hinduism.

These quotes appear a few pages from each other in Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (pages 69 and 79), which I have finally gotten around to reading. The first is a conclusion of science, the second is a conclusion of faith. Both could be said to endorse John Donne’s famous line that “no man is an island.”

Last week, a regular reader of this blog informed me that one of my favorite “thinking” movies, Mindwalk, is based on The Tao of Physics. I did not know that. A physicist, a poet, and a former presidential candidate stroll around Mont-Saint-Michel discussing the nature of reality. Mont-Saint-Michel is an island when the tide comes in and a part of the French mainland when the tide goes out.

Wade on the rocks!

It is the physicist who, for me, gives the most spiritual observation on the nature of reality, explaining that though we perceive ourselves as separate beings, we are constantly exchanging photons.

The science of The Tao of Physics and Mindwalk might very well be outdated by now, but work with me here! The author of The Tao of Physics is suggesting that an intuitive insight of Eastern thought has scientific merit.

After all this philosophical and possibly pseudo-scientific heavy lifting among the animals of Nambiti game reserve, I must say it was a relief to escape to the beach. Wade and I walked, waded, and ran along the sandy shores and clambered up rocky outcrops overlooking the Indian Ocean along Plettenberg Bay.

Having grown up in Southern California, the shore has always been the sanctuary where I find my natural self, the rhythm of my walking and running reflecting the rhythm of the waves and tides. Something breaks through my “karma” and dissolves my “maya” and I am part of the whole for at least an instant.

My natural self along the Indian Ocean. 

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Text and photos copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser and Wade T. Jones. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.