I am so full of love and worry! We are
amazing and terrifying creatures! We have colonized this planet and
nearly destroyed it in so doing. It looks to me like we cannot be
kept from pushing all of developed life (the rather big creatures)
over the cliff of extinction. Of course there will be exceptions, and
one of them may even be human, but it will be a vastly different
world in 100 years. It may be that nothing is left of our culture
but the solid objects.
So what to do? How should we then live?
I keep hoping that we will wake up and feel compassion for the rest
of life, recognize our place in nature, and learn to live within the
bounds of actual possibility instead of quantum dream. But it looks
like it may be far too late to do anything at all except spin around
and look at the accelerating approach of the rocks that will be our
end. So how to spend our time?
I want to delight in the beauty that is
all around us. But I feel guilty not using every moment to try to
unwind our plummet somehow. Is it ridiculous? Is there any hope?
Nature and life can re-inhabit whatever world we leave it, but what
about the marvelous human story that is so threatened? What about
this astonishing Beauty that we have been inheritors of? Will there
be any witnesses or will we have returned everything to dust? What
is lost when we burn a library? Or a million of them? Do the dreams
and possibilities vanish like steam or do they simply dissipate like
light waves, plunging off into the darkness of space only to arrive
somewhere else at some point, gifts from a distant expression? Will
that burst be a meaningful one or just a flash of meaningless light?
(and OK, if it is not meaningless is there a way to make sense of it?
Does meaning exist absolutely or is it created by the gazer? Does
it really matter? Meaning is where it is and not elsewhere.)
I have begun to wonder if the universe
isn't expanding forever in order to keep ASI from infecting the rest
of the universe, should it escape from a single planet like ours. It
will apparently eat us all when we eventually let it out of Pandora's
box. Then what? Well, all indications are that it will colonize the
earth like we did, wiping out whatever species seem useful in any way
and destroying what's left, then take off looking for more territory
to conquer. An expanding universe would prevent such infection from
reaching other areas. Even when the ASI learns to send its virus in
light waves, there is a speed limit that would keep that virus
contained in a certain segment. God's insurance.
Do we consume the joyfulness particles
that we create? Certainly not all of them! There are some left over
for others to reap, but if they don't, is the production of them
wasted other than for the creator? Maybe the library that burns has
outlived its usefullness and every scrap of Beauty in it vanishes
into ashes because it has reached the end of its value. It is not
the book that turns to ash but the idea itself. Maybe the creation
of Beauty is the ongoing process we witness in the creation of stars.
One explosion destroys all form that goes into it and creates new
form coming out. Maybe every car bomb is not just a tragedy but a
nursery; the birth of a quantity of chaos that provides the new dust
for the making of something brand new!
May this is the secret miracle. Maybe
God gives each of us exactly the paradise we yearn for! I think I
want to believe this from now on. I want to believe that we are
given the greatest gift we can imagine and that gift is only limited
by our own creative dreaming. This morning I dreamed of the Beatles
sitting around our dining table in the early 70's. It was lovely and
warm and personal and I was amazed, sitting there with my beloved Mom
listening to John's quips and thinking “now here is a pleasant
fellow.” How did that experience come to me? I either created it
whole or it is the Ultimate Truth come to visit. Whichever it is, I
can never tell the difference and so the difference doesn't matter.
I have stepped into heaven and that can never be erased, even when
the library is burned!
No comments:
Post a Comment