Reflections on Emptiness

A lot of wisdom can be found in fiction, if you read the right authors. My love of Robert James Waller has taken me to his non-fictional collection of essays called Old Songs In a New Cafe. My respect and love of his work grows with every page I read. Two of his essays, "Slow Waltz for Georgia Ann" and "The Turning of Fifty" are priceless treasures of love and wisdom. I want to share one such nugget from the latter:

When you feel yourself starting to become whole, it's all right to accept positions of power, but not before then. The overriding problem with our country, and our world in general, is that we are, in large part, managed by incompetents. Most of these are men who have spent their lives seeking power rather than themselves.

My contempt for politicians has grown to new heights in recent years with none exempt. When I read such a statement about "men who have spent their lives seeking power rather than themselves," I cannot help but think of the names Bush, Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton, and so on. I think no better candidates have been found as examples of T.S. Elliot's "Hollow Men." Yet for all their foolishness, we endure them. We reward them. We praise them. We elect them again and again.

Can we find those who have spent their lives seeking themselves to serve? An exceptionally poignant article by Thomas Sowell appeared in most of the nation's papers yesterday entitled, "The Washington Meat Grinder," in which he says:

This country needs to be able to draw on its best people from every walk of life and from every part of the political spectrum. But the nation is not going to get them if going to Washington means seeing the honorable reputation of a lifetime dragged through the mud just because someone disagrees with you on a political issue...

Washington has become a political meat grinder where character assassination is standard procedure. Clever and glib people say "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen." But the far larger question is whether the country can afford to repel people who are desperately needed but who may have too much self-respect to let political pygmies smear their character.

These are dangerous times indeed and the consequences of incompetence run amuck is grave, but perhaps Elliot is right,

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Reading and Thinking

I thought it would be wise to update my blog to give some background to a new direction my thoughts have taken as of late. My questions are growing by the day, but gladly I'm also discovering answers. I'm slipping closer daily to becoming a heretic I suppose, but I'm confident that at the end of the day there will be something of substance left. Personal peace is worth the sacrifice of popular approval.

Recent reading includes:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach
Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller
A Thousand Country Roads, Robert James Waller
There's No Such Place As Far Away, Richard Bach
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Richard Bach
A Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, Robert James Waller
Border Music, Robert James Waller
Stephen Hawking's Universe: The Cosmos Explained, David Filkin and Stephen Hawking
One, Richard Bach
Biplane, Richard Bach
The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan
Leaving Church: A Memoir, Barbara Brown Taylor
Bridge Across Forever, Richard Bach

All come highly recommended. I'll add further posts soon to try to tie all this together for you.

A Moment of Clarity

My fascination with learning has recently led me to astronomy and physics. The thought occured to me that of all matter in the universe, living and static, humans stand alone in their capacity to choose. Every heavenly body moves according to the laws of physics and has no will of its own. While we can't violate the laws of physics, we have a certain amount of freedom to live within them.

Everyday we are free to make choices about what we will think, where we will go, and what we will say, yet for all our freedom the sum of our choices are so very fleeting in light of the eternity of space and time. We will be forgotten. In time those who remember us will be forgotten. It seems that even the consequences of all our choices will eventually be erased given enough time. Our bodies, our thoughts, and our actions were, are, and soon will be energy once more. From the stars we came and to the stars we will go.

Mass gives up its form and turns to energy once more, E=MC2. In a scientific sense the only thing that is truly eternal is pure energy, even though it will be converted into mass again then back to energy in a perpetual cosmic dance. It begs the question "what in life really matters," given our seemingly small and brief moment in the universe. Are any of our thoughts, actions, things, relationships going to survive for more than a moment?

Our unique place in the universe should give us some insight into who we are and what really matters. While there undoubtedly are beings in the universe more evolved and more advanced than we are, our process of evolution should give us some clue into what we are becoming. We are social creatures by our very nature. What may be called the development of civilization in human history is yet one more maturing step along this great process of evolution. When comparing 21st century humans to our predecessors we have made remarkable advancements. If we project that maturation into the future, especially at the exponential rate of development we've seen in the last 100 years, it is beyond comprehension to imagine what our potential could be. We are most noble when we are most loving, when we are selfless. It is not too dreamy to imagine a time and place when we will have grown up past our fears and our prejudices. Certainly, others must have done it somewhere, somehow. However, it is also frightening to imagine in how many other lifetimes and civilizations people have chosen not to evolve. Rather than chosing to love, they choose to destroy, and miss their destiny.

It is disheartening to know that no matter how advanced we or other civilizations become, in time they end. Cosmic collisions and stellar burnouts occur all the time, and when they do the process starts over again as though it had never began in the first place. The slate is wiped clean. It is this beautiful thing we call life. It is rare and precious beyond comprehension. This wonderful mysterious process has been referred to as "the mind of God" by Albert Einstein and others. For all that we now know, there are some things that will always be just out of our reach to fully understand. We cannot fully know the mind of God, less we become God ourselves, yet I believe we can know his heart.

By knowing His heart we can know ourselves, created in His image. We can know the wonderous potential we have to be human. By our actions we choose everyday to deny or to embrace the gift that is life. There is only one way to be fully human, to be fully divine, to be fully timeless. That way is love. Only love is eternal. Nothing else remains. When we choose love, we aspire to the greatest of all human achivements. The pinnacle of evolution lasts only for seconds amid the vastness of time and space, before the tide comes in and washes our sand castles out to sea, but for that moment we embrace our destiny. We proudly embrace our place in the universe as those who love. I have to believe that somehow in "the mind of God," beyond our comprehension, such an incredible achievement as love, is not lost upon time and space. Today with this word, with this action, we choose to love, to be more than we are, to be timeless.