Dear Pneuma,

The questions we ask like "What is at the end of the Universe?", "If God created everything, what created God?", or "What is the basic unit of reality?" often come to a place of no answer.  When we reach that far, or look that deep, our minds are stunned.  They sit and spin their wheels at an incomprehensible paradox.  It seems to me that we have invested in technology, our hope to surmount those kinds of barriers by building things that can look closer, reach farther, and think faster than we have ever been able to do ourselves,  yet we still don't know what is at the bottom.

Instead, we are finding a vast unknown, and despite everything we do "know," everything our beautiful minds can comprehend, manipulate and ideate; despite all the ways in which our scientific methods have "proven" the natures of things, we still cannot fathom the fullness of reality.  We cannot even be sure that there is a reality.

At our core, or at our outermost boundaries, there is something completely inexplicable.  What I mean, is that, at some point, we realize there is other.  We cannot escape it.  Even if I agree with those that believe all reality is an integrated whole, for we deluded bits of reality that think we are individuals, the integrated whole is still something other that we do not know; in fact, we can neither know it as itself while separate from it, nor know it as itself unless we are separate from it.  Either we are in it, separate, and know it is, but not what it is, or we are it and cannot see or name ourself.

Left here in this place of paradox, then, this place of self because of an unknown other, being and not-being, boundary and boundlessness, part and whole, we have to exert will and choose a place of belief if we want to function at all.   This is the foundation.  This is the ground.  This is the "Big Bang."  This negotiated relationship of self to other is realism, pragmatism, humanism, creationism, deism, nihilism, and quantum mechanics.  This is the something that we place in the nothing we know is there because it is not everything else, and we have a BELIEF.

I spent a large portion of my adult life trying to ignore that nothing place I kept finding because I believed that BELIEF was not enough.  One afternoon, I realized BELIEF is really the only choice we have.  I do not know whether to pity or envy those who do not know their experience of reality is built on nothing less than the beliefs they embrace.

Love Always,

Cobalt Dreams

Dear Pneuma,

The word "know" is an interesting word. There was a time in history when "to know" someone meant to have had sex with him or her, "to know in a carnal sense." This meaning includes a sense of something more than a rational exercise. It seems to imply that to truly know something (or someone), you have to see, taste, hear, and feel it.

So, today I say, "I know why it is cold outside." I say, "I know why water boils." I say, "I know what you mean."

To enrichen the word "know," do I mean "I not only understand the scientific principles behind boiling water, I also encompass the feel, flavor, sight, and sound of boiling water?" Is my use of the word "know" meant to convey a scientifically proven set of principles when I tell someone "I know what you mean?"

It seems, I often use the word "know" when I am trying to turn a belief into a statement of fact: "I know the sun will come up tomorrow." "I know it won't do any good to talk to my sister-in-law." "I know there is God."

In the future, I hope to use "know" with a richer sense of meaning, and to avoid replacing the ideas in which I believe with unproved and unprovable "I know" statements.

Because belief is stronger than knowledge on any given day of the week, and knowing something will require more time and depth of engagement than I usually give.

Happy Monday,
Cobalt Dreams

Dear Pneuma,

Today, my thought turned upside down.  I was hearing God's story, and I heard a reality I had not actually heard before-God is a "screw-up."  God gets it wrong: all over the place; all the time.  If I use Scripture as God revealed to us, I really can't escape this idea.

First, God created, and "it was good."  Somehow, people moved away from God, and Eden fell to Cain's anger, and ages and ages of pain passed, until God decided to try again.  This time, Gods' goodness was the rainbow, the olive branch,  and the dove.  

Time passed, and the world moved away from God.  God spoke to Abraham and said, "Maybe if you move away from all of these other people, and focus on your own family, we can get something really marvelous going," so Abraham moved to Nevada (or someplace pretty similar) and it worked; for a while. 

Then, times in the desert got tough, people moved to Egypt, and after a few generations, people had forgotten that the earth belonged to God, and that "it was good."   They got caught up in class distinctions, religious definitions, slavery and few other "not so  good" things.  God had Moses lead the Children of Israel back out of the "big, bad city," possibly hoping that fresh country air would clear out the cobwebs and get people feeling right in no time. 

God decided to live among us for a time.  God stayed with the people, hoping, by being visibly present, that they would remember.  Instead, God scared the living daylights out of folks and they told Moses: "You talk to It."  He did, but then he was gone, and God tried speaking to the people through  wise women and priestly men, but the people said, "Please give us Kings.  You are too much, God.  You are too much."

So God tried again.  How many failures is this now?  How many false starts and "do-overs?" Is it five?  Is it six?  The next time God tried to make good, we got Kings-Saul, David, Solomon-and life was good for a while, if our Bible is to be believed, and yet . . .yet. 

So follow God's failures through the words and prayers of the Bible, through the wars, the plagues, the exiles, the losses and destructions, and eventually you arrive at Jesus.  So, what if Jesus is not a culminated effort, not the fruition of creation's purpose, but yet another attempt by our God to be with us, to be in us, to love us and share the wisdom and joy in a creation that was meant to be good?

I know readers, that believe the Bible shows us how pitiful and stupid people are.  I know readers that believe the Christian faith is meant to teach us how unworthy, unimportant, and altogether screwed up we humans are, but:

What if the God of the Christian faith is not Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omni-Perfect?  What does it mean if God, as revealed through reason, tradition, scripture, and experience, is the "screw up?"

It means that God always tries again.  

What does it mean to worship a Being that never gives up?  What does it mean to worship a Being that, not succeeding at first, tries and tries again?  What does it mean to see Jesus, not as the "Perfect Human Being," but instead, as another Hope of God, proof of the Faith God has in us, that some day, we may just figure it all out: that Eden never fell.  What if Jesus is not the last, but simply another in a long line of attempts by God to say "I love you.  I love you all?"

Thinking new thoughts,

Cobalt Dreams