Everybody believes in God, right? Most people do. I don’t. Not that one anyways. The super-hero God of the religions. The story book character God with super powers that we read about in the scriptures.
And God slew the Minnownites. And God blessed Kajeeziel. And God created the earth and the universe and the light and the dark and then he rested because he was tired.
God might be something but probably not our descriptions. That’s what I think. I mean if God is infinite, what are the chances that he/she/it would fit into our descriptions?
So I decided to ask my barista about it. She might know something.
“Do you believe in God?” I queried
“I do.” she said.
”What is it?” I deeperly dug.
”I don’t know.” she responded.
”Ha! You believe in something you don’t know? That’s kind of a form of dementia.” We had been talking about her 91 year old Grandfather who she had visited recently.
”No, I believe in a power greater than myself.”
”Like a car?” I suggested.
”No. A car is greater than myself, but . . . I don’t really have a name for it. You know?”
I did know but I wanted to hear her say more. “Oh, you don’t have a definition pinned down like the religions do?”
”No, nuh nuh nuh no. It’s more spiritual than that. It’s my own understanding of what God is. I think without that painting in front of everything . . . it’s almost like religion gave me a painting and it was like - here this is what God is, but behind the painting is like a deep field. Religion gave me a painting and I needed that for awhile.”
”Like behind the super-hero character in the scriptures there was like . . . something.” I interrupted.
”Yeah. I’ll tell you more about it sometime. I have alot to say about that.”
I could tell she did too but I had to move on, the patrons were queuing up behind me. I ordered my chai tea latte with oat milk and moved away from the dais, the confessional booth, the register and found a seat.
There are some things that are considered divine: laughter, love, beauty. If you think about it intimations of infinity are all around us. The blue sky, the subtlety of the wind blowing the leaves around, making them dance, the mystery of birth and death. Check out the Mandelbrot set.
The Mandelbrot set is a mathematical equation which creates a spontaneously unfolding pattern of infinite complexity. It never ends and it never repeats itself. It’s not possible for a human to glimpse all but a tiny fraction of it or for our computers to compute all but a minuscule, minute fragment of it.
You have to wonder if the Mandelbrot set would exist if there were no humans to think it up and no computers to display it? Does it reside in some realm of pure numbers or is it purely a product of our imagination? Are we God? Or atleast does our creativity have some divine agency?
The Hindu concept of God and the ages is that of a recycling universe, expanding and contracting like breathing. Their cosmology proposes that the god Brahma breathes the universe into existence when he exhales and when he inhales it dissolves. They even conceive of the days and nights and years of Brahma.
Modern astrophysics is getting close to that idea. We know the universe is expanding, Brahma breathing out. It may be that one day it will slow down and start contracting, Brahma breathing in. After a long exhalation.
The universe may have originated as a microscopic bubble that arose from the space of an earlier universe which in turn arose from another universe. There may be universes “strewn like stars across inaccessible infinities of random spaces and times and sets of natural laws”. So says Timothy Ferris in his brilliant book The Whole Shebang.
If we define God as the creator of the universe then as far as we know, scientifically, it started from a super small dot or spot or energy center - something so simple, so primal that there was not even two things: a singularity, something that had no opposite. Everything that exists has conditions that are endowed by duality, like light casts a shadow and water is wet, but that first thing did not have conditions. It was conditionless, even the natural laws that govern the universe did not exist.
So maybe God is utter simplicity, maybe God is that simple beautiful feeling of contentment that you feel in a quiet moment when nothing else is pressing on you.
Maybe the poets can inform us about God.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” Psalms 19:1. That’s a good one.
“God, Thou great symmetry,
Who put a biting lust in me
From whence my arrows spring,
For all the frittered days
That I have spent in shapeless ways
Give me one perfect thing.”
— Anna Wickham,
from ‘Envoi,’ in Selected Poems. London: Chatto and Windus, 1971
Or my zany friend Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit priest who lived in the 19th century. He liked to wrestle with God and write bongo poetry. Now he’s recognized as one of the most influential poets of his time. ‘Carrion’ of course is decaying flesh.
Carrion Comfort
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
I had to read that a few times. If you’re really into it, check out this podcast from the Poetry Foundation.
One thing we can say is that there is a universal desire to have a God to worship (or to fear). It’s found throughout history, in every culture all over the world. There must be something to it. But what?
Do you believe in him? Her? It? What is God? I ask you good reader.
I’m reminded of the story of the old Jewish rabbis discussing different proofs for the existence of God. The discussion went on and on for hours each trying to outdo the others with their logic. Finally one of the rabbis stood up and said, “God is so great, he does not even need to exist.” and walked out.
I’m also reminded of the famous T. S. Eliot quote from Four Quartets.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.“
music from Cafe De Anatolia - Oriental Lounge Music خنیا Beautiful Arabic Chillout 音楽 Mix 1:41:42
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