Wednesday, January 13, 2016

Does G-d Exist?

Words are ships; painted cargo vessels for thoughts.  We get used to associating their color with their content.   Most of the time, they come in from sea without much investigation.  I can hear a word and put it quickly in its color-coded port.  Sometimes, if the light is just right, and air is clear, I am overcome with curiosity, and consider more deeply a word.  I realize they aren’t just cargo vessels full of etymological traits: histories, abuses, implications.  Rather, they are vast Universes.  Infinite.  The energy they contain exceeds me.  I tremble.  It seems hopeless.  A lifetime spent scratching away, exhuming their vast scope, I could never reach their ends.  Lemniscate -1 at best.  
Black Holes seem Spiritual.  We cannot comprehend them.  We cannot sustainably conceptualize them.  They might not exist.  We throw contradicting theories at them.  We popularize them.  Confine them to their cargo vessels, bumming rides on them with a sense of pride.  Our scientific acuity!  Black Holes.  Don’t mess with us now! Black Holes.  
Maybe that’s where G-d lives.  Or perhaps: sheol.  Standing on the gangway to a Black Hole, I am filled with the Familiar Loneliness.  The homesick desperation.  Is this Black Hole a shimmering façade?  Does it exist?  Does He exist?  I think so.  I think so.  Shit.
Really, the “infinite” is just a fancy way of saying “huh”?  I tend to believe that, given enough “time”, we will understand a Black Hole (if it exists).  Given enough Time, we will understand G-d.  But we need to be a little more transient than we are typically comfortable with.  It’s a tenable solution to say “there is no way to know, unless we pass the event horizon, what might be on the other side.”  But at some point, that won’t be enough.  We will find ourselves slipping over that boundary, looking inside the windy cave.  Inside a black hole information is lost (unless Hawking’s weird hair idea is true) to us.  The grave is silent.  Our wineskins would burst should we try to contain it.  We will be undone if we look upon His face.  
I still throw myself against the bastions of the universe.  I am desperate to consume its meaning.  Though my eyes cannot see the essence of the universe when I stare up at space, I strain nonetheless. I weep.  And yet!  What a delight to have something so tangibly intangible as a Black Hole!   Our Father, in Heaven, hallowed is Your Name.  I can’t contain your Great and Terrible being.  You Are.  You saw that it was good, the works of your Hands.  You touch our hips and leave is limping, so that we don’t destroy ourselves against You.  You tell us not to worry.  And how could we?  To worry is to pretend we understand.  We do not understand.  Protect us as we reach for the infinite.  Protect us as we are pulled into the Black Hole.  On the hour you determined, show us your Glory.  Consume us, let our atoms be reborn in furnaces of your Violent Love.  Give us patience.  Help us to see what we are capable of seeing.  The vast smallness.  The stars.  The lilly.  The grain of sand by the sea.  All that we are, a smallness in your sea.  Vessels with cargo.  Painted ships.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I like this a lot. One day soon, I hope to take the time to respond. In the meantime, this was good for me to read.

Anonymous said...

This was the first thing I read this morning and I was moved by it. Thank you.

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Nathanaelbendavid said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nathanaelbendavid said...

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