Sigmar Polke: Untitled

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[Experience] is the only thing that teaches us the articles of our creed in a way worth learning them. Every one of us carries professed beliefs, which lie there inoperative, bedridden, in the hospital and dormitory of our souls, until some great necessity or sudden circumstance comes that flings a beam of light upon them, and then they start and waken. We do not know the use of the sword until we are in battle. Until the shipwreck comes, no man puts on the lifebelt in his cabin. Every one of us has large tracts of Christian truth which we think we most surely believe, but which need experience to quicken them, and need us to grow up into the possession of them. Of all our teachers who turn beliefs assented to into beliefs really believed none is so mighty as sorrow; for that makes a man lay a firm hold on the deep things of God’s Word.

“Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.” Julian Huxley said that, and I can quite see his point, why it looks as it does. But what if God always was at a place we can never reach — namely, infinity — and before, the primitive means of understanding Him that He gave us were like an adult who stoops down to the level of a child? As the child learns more, he finds that the world is so much richer than he had ever thought before, and more mysterious. God’s connection to the world seems more and more subtle not because He has changed, but that our understanding of everything has changed; ultimately it is to transcend knowledge, if one is ever ready for it, a pure perception then that God is beyond, beyond all things… and is waiting for us to comprehend the magnitude of heaven.

death is the hungry nothing
revel in the driving wind
fire in the senses thrown
a galaxy’s light overtaken
by the singular desire
darkness shall not curse us
time cannot be destroyed
the steel of paradise sing
and i, who tried to fill all
hearts with light, shall i
surrender to impossibility?
not to wonder carelessly
break bread with castaways
no light is unreflected
time can only be spent
to the gain of all makers
where the wind blows, i go
ablaze with love i know
death ever to remain hungry

It all “just happened”? You might find, that if you do not hold that there is an ultimate purpose to the universe, that’s where your line of reasoning ends up. Oh, there are scientific reasons why such things are as they are? Why is it like that, then? We may discover that this is the only way that any universe may work. Why? Why should that be the case? People like to think of alternatives to the way things are, and believe they know better than God what should be tweaked, and what things should be outright different, than how things are. Well, I have thoughts on what alternatives there are to your explanations of things. A different metamatrix, let us say. Things that should be tweaked, and are downright different than a purely materialistic view of how and why things are. Beware pride.

I once thought about natural disasters. The problem of suffering when a human agent causes it can pretty much be explained away by the application of free will. That type of evil is not that big a thinker. But what about large scale disasters? How can God be good while earthquakes kill thousands and maim thousands more? I couldn’t get a handle on it. Then I was looking around the internet for ideas on the matter, and I found something applicable. I was approaching the problem incorrectly, which we might do if we base it on things like newscasts. I was thinking of people en masse, as a big lump of humanity, when we should be thinking of them one by one, as we are. Each victim has his or her own story. He might be taken, she might be wounded, another has no more home. If no more, it was his time; otherwise, one is tested in that particular way that transpires.

One might be tempted to say that God is not fair in the way he deals with some people, as opposed to those who have somewhat fabulous lives. If we think that this world is all there is, then we can only conclude that the world is unjust. But we must think of it that this world, this life will be as a dream is when we wake up in the morning. Like the story of the twins in the womb, where one thinks the womb is all there is, and when one is born out of it, thinks something horrible has happened. That is the picture we work with: that we upon death transcend the view that we must adhere to in this world. Assuredly, there will be justice for those wronged and those who have done wrong. But I cannot think that judgement will be anything like we are used to on earth. Nor the rewards to the faithful, those of constant heart.

Giorgio De Chirico
Metaphysical Interior with Biscuits

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All is vanity, and chasing after wind. All these words have been written before, I tell you nothing new under the sun, for what is written shall ever be written again, as many cycles as there are years, as we live under the turning of the Wheel. What hope have we to mean something before, like the dust we are, we are scattered into the winds, never to be gathered together again? Or shall we believe that there is more? Can we conceivably have the notion that the God of small things listens to the cricket’s chirp, to know with every fluctuation of a temperature’s degree, what transpires in the smallest capillaries of our bloodstream? To Him it is not vanity. To Him, who knows from where the wind comes, and to where it goes, life is not a poor player. We will perhaps arrange these written words anew, and find meaning even in the dregs of our language. In the attempt, that denies the entropy another minute of any heart’s erosion.

love is danger
i am thrice cursed as i breathe
to know, to feel, to speak
yet armed with the name of my warmth
through darkest distance
eons of patience
and God, more diligent than time itself
shows shadows of what is to be
this unbeliever
to delve into such deepness
that mystery sings
how hard to believe the surest things
while the flimsy world unravels
to know the future’s business
as i step forward
slaked of night’s ink
to be alone when i awake, now
to know, to feel, to speak
i am thrice cursed as i breathe
love is danger

Love is what unfolds from the desire of the heart. The rose that blooms even when the world is shrouded in snow — the kiss of immortality. The eagle feather which is held in solemn trust, for to call upon the Creator. It is the end of the journey, when home is found again, sometimes at a new place. Love is to know what is right. Why do you seek after something that you can find in simplest terms, within your very grasp? Love is everything you think it is. It can hurt you and blind you, it can make you despair, and it can frustrate your every movement. But if it is love, you will find that all of it is worth it. And more: you will have some idea why all of this is the way it is. Maybe to see where you are drawn in the great blueprint the Builder meticulously inscribed, and to know you are not no one: you have a place, and a purpose. This is love: where heaven touches down to earth, through our hands: no one else’s.

If you didn’t notice about the world, you can always ask why. However much we figure out, if we do it properly, there are more questions than answers that are brought about from our efforts. What if, for one, there are infinite chains of interconnected why’s behind all things, in the vasty vast of what can be known — we will never exhaust it. And that God knows the answers to all why’s, whether we have gotten to them or will never get to them: this is omniscience, and this is omnipotence: to have made something of such depth, which speaks of the creator, who is greater. This is the answer to one question, whether you thought to ask or not.