I think of the daughter of one of my former congregants. As a vital, young woman, she turned to her father and asked, “Are we kidding ourselves? Are we making this up?”, a natural inquiry as far as I am concerned, into the durability of our very existence. Some might consider it blasphemous to question so, but I don’t. I think that the more we ask, the more we can know. And as people who are spiritually minded—and any who reads these blogs are—we will ask.
The "know-ability" of the subject...
I recently watched a series of lectures on Understanding Gravity—Black Holes, Tides and Curved Spacetime. The mathematics escaped me entirely, but not the “know-ability” of the subject. Is it not amazing that minds on an infinitesimal speck of a planet in an infinitesimal speck of a galaxy in a jinormous cosmos can dope out the connectivities that consistently unfold in something that cannot adequately be measured? Sometimes it is enough to ask questions that will get answered down the road like Galileo, Newton and Einstein did. I am content with the “know-ability” of that which I do not yet know.
Evidences rather than proofs...
Or maybe enough with rationalizing! Maybe we could do what the religieuse—priests, nuns, people who join holy orders—do and follow spiritual practices that focus upon God-like ideas. Perhaps the inner invitation brings some light and enough “knowings” to keep us going, for some will feel a response to the invitation. I think that we will need to be satisfied with evidences rather than proofs. The evidences will be unique to the one who questions since no one can know for us what only we can know for ourselves.
Keep up the questions...
I think we should keep up the questions, though. What I did learn about black holes was that they can be dangerous and things that fall into them never come out. Better to keep up the inquiry rather than fall into a mental black hole that forms through disinterest and discouragement.
More Essays About Everything is now available on Amazon
No comments:
Post a Comment