Philip K. Dick described God as being found in the trash layer of the world. This struck me as having a high content of truth. What are we to make of that statement? Why would this be? For is not God found above the highest heaven? Is not Heaven God’s throne, and earth merely a footstool? Yet I look back, when He visited this world, and showed His true nature. He came not to rule, but to serve, the reason why almost all the Jews rejected Him as the messiah. He was the opposite of what they were expecting — the Suffering Servant, not the conquering king. This, too, I find thinking has a significant quality of truth to it. In the very nature of nature we find the surprises that now we don’t think about, like the great dinosaurs all dying out and the lilliputian rodent-like mammal sweeping over as the victor of evolution (for now). Now we do not find it at all unusual that an image of a crucified man, we use to give us strength. Selah.

After the shouting as he rode on a donkey, “Hosanna in the highest!”, what happened then? This is God, your King, o people, come down from on high. This is God with us, our Immanuel. We have waited so long for our Savior to come, and now He comes in peace into the City of Prophets, the city of the Presence, the Temple. Do we make Him, then, King over all the earth? For God so loved the world, that He gave us this man, His only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him, it is as if that soul were never to die, even if they were to leave this green world. What can we possibly do for such a man, who saves us even from our own selves? For being the Son of God means that He is God, for one God there is, and so the Son of God must share God’s very nature. God with us.

Must it be that the stone the builders rejected become the cornerstone? What is to be if He were given to the archons of the Temple, the elders? Will they not pay Him tribute? Or will they pass Him along to become like a curse, and “for the good of the many, is one sacrificed”? (I’m cold, I’m cold…) What do they say has the crowd demanded, if it can be believed? One thinks it no small thing that those who cheered this King of the Jews now turn away, afraid. Who are we, now, leading Him to His final fate, through the streets of Jerusalem? (I’m cold, I’m cold…) Who is it now, who asks for forgiveness for those who slay Him? Who is being raised upon a tree, upon a cross? Who have we crucified, for all of the world and people and eternity and angels to see? Who? (I’m cold, I’m cold…) It is God. And we have thrown him away….

i imagine fingers emanating the aroma of wine
like a whisper that things are not as they seem
i am a subversive truth, with hints of another world
verily, have i dreamed so very often?
i cry out that darkness will not withstand our fire
but these are only candles that we wield
symmetries broken as we learn to doubt
though will i find asylum in the memory of my rose
time is a vagrant air we ignore till it becomes deadly
swirl the possibilities till they all assemble
in magic does life imagine the smallest of destinies
and i breathed of the high smoke of eternity
to return, still me, wearing the soul of a saint

Mordecai Ardon: The Red Dew

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If you have in mind to make sense of things, as you might, you should go the path of faith and reason. If you need to pick one of the two, pick reason; but if both are available to you, put faith first. Further, if you go deeply enough into reason, you will end up in the parlor of science. All that science is is that it means you’re indeed deadly serious about wanting to make sense of things. If it can be measured, and if a proper mathematics can be developed around it, science can make sense of it. Unfortunately, we do not as yet have any way of measuring God, or in fact, anything of the spirit world (not even imaginary things are as yet susceptible to science’s calipers, as of this writing, and the spirit world is definitely more subtle in nature). This may not always be so, however. Stay tuned.

So as it happens that more of the world is unexplained rather than explained, it is wise to rely on faith. Just make sure that the source of your faith is tested, and you’re basically good to go. Not that you’ll never make mistakes. For Heaven’s sake. The best science is prone to mistakes, and you think your faith is miraculously bulletproof? Have realistic expectations, especially about faith. And then, if you go deeply enough into faith, you will hit the height of sainthood, which I think is pretty much universally acclaimed as a “way to be”, if we’re talking the real deal. It was thus I set a goal for myself in this life: to be a scientist saint. I might actually get there, too. That’s sort of a scary thought.

in the vastness of alone am i a pebble in the desert
the society of my mind has its infidels, bent on war
(i hover: a center, a dreamlike quiet stills my know)
a madness so perfectly designed, as to make one sane
i breathed in the vapors of time, as to make one wise
drifted from island to island in imaginary eternities
(i have seen out this window the dreaming pass by)
the vision pours from my eyes, formless and void
words spoken in solitude return to infinite silence

Thomas a Kempis speaks for all the ages when he represents Jesus as saying to him, “A wise lover regards not so much the gift of him who loves, as the love of him who gives. He esteems affection rather than valuables, and sets all gifts below the Beloved. A noble-minded lover rests not in the gift, but in Me above every gift.” The sustaining power of the Beloved Presence has through the ages made the sickbed sweet and the graveside triumphant; transformed broken hearts and relations; brought glory to drudgery, poverty and old age; and turned the martyr’s stake or noose into a place of coronation.

One interesting vision I had was of how the elements gain their characteristics. It appeared in my mind while I was in Brooklyn, at a Throbbing Gristle concert, which I was invited to by my Russian friend, Boris. We had just had dinner, and I had had a drink during that, plus I was taking some cold medicine. So, on something of an altered state of mind, I saw the various elements in simple models, and what different electron “shells” they had (“shells” in quotes because it is a rather antiquated concept, but one that best describes how we can understand an atom’s interface). We realize that one only interacts with an atom via those “shells”. The nucleus pretty much only gives an atom its mass.

If we understand that elements behave the way they do, when encountering other elements or more of the same element, because of the structure of their electron “shells”, we understand the façade of their emergence to be the fundamental structure to what qualitatively we experience of any substance at all. The factors that are determined by placement of electrons emerge by their bonding to other elements, or the same, and the resultant molecular arrangements make emergent larger scale behavior and experientials of elemental substance and molecular structures. The devil is in the details, God is the God of small things. That is how fine tuned the qualities are of that which we call physical reality: the humming of the electrons sing into being all of creation.

accidental surfaces: papers strewn by winds and covering
          acres in a millionlike patchwork
these books were not burned, but worse: unopened,
          tragic as unmarked graves, as if unlived
my senses are swallowed in the fugue, mist without
          memory of the black, bloodless truth
only crippled may you crawl into the house of wisdom;
          only destitute are you blameless
like a dream, you cannot understand the fate from inside
          it: the puzzle is not made of its pieces
without magic i will leap, fire at my heels, time to slow
          like wondering as i hang from the sky
and yet i am nothing but a follicle of dust shivering in a
          brownian daydream, mostly lost

van Gogh: Corridor in the Asylum

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I am an annihilationist. This means I do not believe in an eternal Hell, where the wicked are punished infinitely for a finite amount of sin. That never really made sense to me. I believe that when the netherworld is tossed (with its inhabitants) into the Lake of Fire, all of them are burned so that nothing of them remains, as painful as the amount of sin they committed in life would warrant. You don’t want to be a part of eternity? OK, pay your debts and you’re history. No muss, no fuss. And about Satan twisting in agony forever and ever? A different translation is for an age and ages that he burns — a lot, but that would be as expected for the prime evil. But at the end, he would be no more, as well. And I know I may be wrong, but this seems like such a sensible way of God’s justice to be manifest, you know? Thus do I believe.

Do you at all wonder about faith? How can you wish all the wrongs done you to be redressed, while all the wrongs you do to be overlooked? Yet this is the way people think; I know I have thought in this exact way. What will you believe when you face your Maker on the day of judgement? For we will be naked, of body, mind, soul, and spirit on that Day. Without excuse, will we all be. Do you wish to prepare for such an event? This is wisdom. Forgive, as you want to be forgiven. Learn how to let it go, all the petty things. If they come back, let it go again. Until you are free.

When we go through life
So sure of where we’re headin’
And we wind up lost and it’s
The best thing that could have happened
’Cause sometimes when you lose your way
It’s really just as well
Because you find yourself
Yeah, that’s when you find yourself

– Brad Paisley

[From our side] our relation to God is unrighteous. Secretly we are ourselves the masters in this relationship. We are not concerned with God, but with our own requirements, to which God must adjust Himself. Our arrogance demands that, in addition to everything else, some super-world should also be known and accessible to us. Our conduct calls for some deeper sanction, some approbation and remuneration from another world. Our well-regulated, pleasurable life longs for some hours of devotion, some prolongation into infinity. And so, when we set God upon the throne of the world, we mean by God ourselves. In “believing” on Him, we justify, enjoy, and adore ourselves.

It can be seen thusly, the implements of life: we have been given everything, and only the mistakes are ours. Any talent, skill, strength, or intelligence: gifts from God. Even our will, and our ability to make any kind of effort: gifts. And of course creativity is a gift, what most of all is spoken of when He said, let us make him in our image. Whenever we do that is told us to do, all features of this act are given us: the resolve, the ability, the knowledge, the experience, the energy summoned: all gifts. And when we do something truly original, it is not that we do something outside the realm of God’s gifts; in fact, it is usually known to be the opposite. In Amadeus, Salieri says he is an enemy of God, because God spoke through Mozart in his music. That which is most beyond the ordinary is most a Gift, is it not?

But the mistakes, the errors, the sins, the misjudging: of course, God works them into His plan, but they are not of Him. Sometimes they seem to serve such purpose that one is suspicious as to whether the mistake was a mistake, things turn out so well. But that is only the skill of God, not yours. Error is worked into perfection only by a love that can summon light out of darkness. If you had meant to make that mistake, it would have been in your head to do so to begin with. They are of us, the errors, we who are the imperfect ones. (And we should not boast of these.) Yes, it is an extreme view, but it has some merit. To believe that by thus indeed we are defined: in what we do wrong, in those errors we commit into the record of the world, which reflect, however faintly, in eternity.

I am lost in dreaming for a time, thinking only in riddles.

Within me somewhere still is a rebellious heart, though quiet.

There is fire in me, some new, some that was before I was.

If we do not touch, a distance will grow with our neglect.

Finding purpose in life is merely to understand this: love.

Listen to others: you might just find yourself in their words.

I have withstood what I could, and I let the other things pass.

There comes certain moments in life, when it is as if everything stops turning, and for that moment, you are doing right by God and the world, and all that is wrong is quiet, and faded in the background’s background. When for that short space in time you understand how it is that God is love, with all that happens in the chaos of things and the violence of the malcontented. Do not think it is an illusion that these moments are, for it is the worry, and concern about lesser things, that is truly the illusion. The place where you find the presence of God is hallowed ground, wherever you may find it. The bush that burns and is not consumed. Like the heart that knows what it is to love.

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.