UNIVERSAL APPRECIATION

This was in one of my first essays but came up missing. Curious. So this is a reprise.

I grew up in a perfectly sized, mid-western town. It was called a city but I thought of it as a town. No one was ever certain if there were 40 or 50 thousand people in the town but it never seemed to matter.  It was a good town. I say was because I have not lived there for over 30 years and I know things change. There are two rivers running through the heart of the town. One of them was perfect for swimming and boating. I was fortunate that my family’s home was located on the banks of that river and I took full advantage of it.

Due to the very nature of my surroundings; the beauty of the spring flowers along the river, the amazing array of fish we could catch nearly year ‘round, the adorable teenage girls that would sunbathe on the piers in the summer months, often gave me pause to think. What’s this all about? As a young teen I pretty much understood why I appreciated the sunbathers. But, why do I appreciate tulips? My dog couldn’t care less about the delicate beauty of a tulip. The ability to perceive of and appreciate so much of our world, our universe, is purely human. But why? Why us? Why us God?

My childhood and church going was a constant battle of wills. Go fishing? Go to church. Go fishing? Go to church. Go fishing. My parents were Presbyterians. I was a Communicant’s Class dropout. By the time I hit high school age, the act of attending church was far from my mind. Did I believe in God? Honestly, I don’t remember. When I went on to college though, and realized that I know everything, I began to think back on my early years as a kid asking why. But I added another query into the mix. Where? Where is God?  Not who or what, but where. So I set out in my mind to answer the question. I knew I could find the answer because college-age students are the smartest people in the world. After very little biblical or philosophical research, I had it. God is everywhere! Oh, I know, you hear that all the time. But this was different.

God is everywhere because he is us.  Yup. It was us who wrote the Bible, right? It is the collective minds of mankind that conceive of religions and develop them into something that is supposed to help teach us right from wrong. So instead of saying that God is everywhere in our lives helping us get through the tough times, why can’t we just accept that he is us? You and me and your jerky neighbor who just painted his house mauve; we are God. So when we pray, are we praying to some bearded fellow sitting on a throne beyond the universe? Or are we simply helping to put our hopes and wishes into our minds to direct us to some positive end? It seems okay to presume so, if we know that our own minds are a fractional piece of God’s mind. There, problem solved. I figured it out when I was in college. . . . . . . . Then I graduated.

College smugness seems to quickly disappear when a person goes out into the real world. Like most of my friends, marriage and family happened to me over the next 20 or so years. Before my daughter was born, I really didn’t take much time for spirituality and the old questions that I so easily answered years back. But then something happened to me that changed everything.

On the day of the birth of my daughter, the center of my universe shifted. It shifted from me to her. I realized that day that if someone said that I must die so that this little bundle may live . . . no problem. With the universe no longer about me, I began to ask questions again. But this time I had lots of questions. I read books; Cosmology and Philosophy books. Maybe I should call them “scientific theory” and “thought theory” books. I was impressed that so many of the truly brainy scientists had such strong faiths. God seemed to always be an integral part of their scientific psyche. I have often been disheartened to witness the fact that organized, mostly Christian, religions tend to denounce scientific theory and discovery while scientists seem to embrace religion and God. Can’t we all just get along?

After my divorce and my daughter reaching her late teens, my universe shifted once again. This time it began to center around God. As I read more Big Bang Theory and  Black Hole Theory and as our telescopes reached further back in time to the very  beginning of the universe, I began to realize that I never had the answers. I wasn't even close. But it didn't matter much. Now I wasn't only perceiving of and appreciating that tulip on the riverbank, I was becoming completely rapt in the total package. I remember a line from Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” in which a lovesick Emily Webb blurts out “Oh World, You’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you.” Profound? Yes. True? Also yes. I’ll never know all the answers. But, perceiving of and appreciating as much of our universe as possible, is to me, a noble quest. It is my humble opinion that God cracks a little smile as we continue to inch closer to the answers.

Many of the greatest minds today are churning up scientific evidence that lends itself perfectly to the possibility that the gap between science and theology is rapidly closing.  Cosmology is the study of the physical universe from the very big to the very small. String Theory is a result of cosmologists, through mathematical models, coming up with really difficult stuff to understand that tends to reveal the possibility that God is among us. The really brainy people working on this are pretty convinced that there are many more dimensions than just three in our world. The reason we cannot see into these other dimensions is because all matter and light are stuck in only three dimensions. Some cosmologists have concluded that there are as many as 11 dimensions.

OK . . . work with me on this. If we can accept that our universe around us has a lot of stuff going on that we cannot see or perceive of, does it not make sense to presume then that God could have a very comfortable spot to hang out in like maybe the eighth dimension, eating popcorn and watching us create all sorts of entertaining quandaries for his, and our amusement? Then, when we really screw up, he can project through those dimensions and touch our lives in ways that we cannot feel in our limited world but we just know He had something to do with fixing the problem.

No matter how many dimensions there are, the three we've got have lent themselves pretty well to giving me the ability to appreciate the universe. To remember springtime, sitting on that riverbank watching the meandering water flow by while perfectly formed teenage girls seem to tan right before my eyes stretched out on the docks and tulips open themselves to an amazingly blue sky. That was my universe. It still is. Thank you God.