Friday, December 31, 2010

A Single Seed Point of Light

In my last blog post I wrote about the senselessness of my daughter-in-law's cancer and how annoyed I am by the thought that there may be a higher power, energy or entity that disperses things like cancer in undeterminable ways.  So, that was, um, a tantrum.   I'll share a quote from one of my favorite author's to get today's post started:

"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."   — Anne Lamott


My rant about how *effed* up the thought of an entity handing out random illnesses affirms for me, and all of you, that I am not always thinking with the most evolved part of my brain.  I guess I was thinking of a God or entity that could be a bit like me and spite, smite, and vex people with whom I am not pleased.  Pu-lease . . . . . .   I hate these lessons where for one reason or another I have shrunk the universe to a size that I think I can control or influence all parts of.  So, let's clear this all up.  I do not believe that god is an entity or a knowing energy.  I believe that god is how we describe our connections with each other and all living things - including stars and black holes!

Now, I'd like to take a moment or two to re-visit the whole idea I brought up about cancer and other maladies and how I thought they were NOT predestined or predetermined.  I may have to swallow my words (gulp) and toss out that possibility.  I am currently reading a novel where the main character is a Kabbalist teacher.  Early in the book, he is reminded of a childhood experience he had at a planetarium.  When he asks a question about the Big Bang, his astronomy teacher tells him of Einstein's single seed of light theory.  Loosely translated this means, if we could travel faster than the speed of light back to the big bang, all we would see would be a single seed of light.  Contained in that tiny seed of light is every single thing in the universe - all the stars and planets and galaxies and everything in and on those stars, planets and galaxies.  His teacher tells him that he is held, as we are all, in that single seed of light.  And, his teacher says, so is the question he just asked about the big bang.  At that moment the protagonist feels as if the stars and planets come through the telescope he is looking through and kisses him on the lips.  It changes his relationship with god, with science, and with himself forever.

After reading that, I could not help but think of my immature rant about someone or something being in charge of handing out people's diseases and destinies.  Of course there is no "one" doing that.  But, it is not hard for me to accept that all these things were in the universe from the beginning, billions and billions of years ago.  Was there a file with someone's name on it that said "Inflammatory Breast Cancer, Age 30" or "Down Syndrome, Moment of Conception"??  Nope.  Not THAT black and white.  But what has been and is still out there are possibilities.  While a specific cancer cell may not have been with us from the moment of the big bang, all the necessary conditions for elements to gather, connect, bond and evolve into that cancer cell have been here.  And the whole Down Syndrome thing, how many times in the past million years do you think intracellular matter has not connected just right, mutating the cells and hence the entity it was growing?

Some of you may have guessed by now, I am not a scientist of any sort.  I think that what separates formal scientists from those of us who philosophize and dream is that a scientist (that is a "hard" scientist) will take their philosophies into a lab and try to physically re-create, document, and explain the thought or process.  Good for them.  Good for them for not getting discouraged at all the hard work those processes are and what they need to learn before they begin their experiments.  Just think of all that scientists need to learn before they can begin testing their own ideas - biology, chemistry, physics, math - all of the hard science languages.  By learning to work and communicate in scientific language they can tell the rest of us what they are doing.   Well, at least the rest of the scientific community who will break it down for us.

So, I now take back my statement about predestined conditions.  They have been here since before that seed point of light began expanding.  It just really sucks when the randomness of the cosmos lands on those you love.  Going back to the protagonist in the novel I am reading, supposedly his question about the cosmos existed in that seed light of the beginning of the universe.  His teacher did not say that it was known that the question would be asked by this particular student.  Perhaps, like the character in the novel who was at the right place at the right time with the right person, also the rest of us including cancer bearers, may be in places, with people, cells, and atoms whose effect we can not predict on our lives.

I wish I had more time to keep writing - all of this has stirred my curiosities about many things - especially about the question the young boy asked.  If that question was part of the small seed point of light, then are not all our questions, all our thoughts, part of that seed?  How then, do the questions and thoughts hook up with the people who eventually ask and answer?  Deep, very deep.

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