The Unseen Here and
Now . . .
Stuart
Revercomb
Stuart
Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four
children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be
a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.
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"Thursday's Fare"
Backing Forward Downside Up
Why do we have to "look back" at New Years?
I have never been very good at looking back. I would like to claim this as the wise practice of a positive thinker who doesn't dwell on the past, but the truth is likely something else - like a lousy memory. I'm not sure if it's a self protection mechanism inherited over the centuries or merely the result of too many youthful indiscretions, but whatever the reason my "rememberer" seems to be less than fully functional.
Or as a dear friend told me recently, "Perhaps you just have a good forgetter."
I also have a rather limited ability to look forward, which put nicely might be saying I am good at trusting providence and the goodwill of my creator. I suppose I am to some degree, but I often find myself questioning whether I am truly exercising "Trust" or just being plain lazy - failing to make the necessary plans and take the appropriate actions to achieve certain goals.
It's often hard to find the balance in such things. As any man who has ever helped "plan" a wedding knows - you're either "too involved" or "just not interested enough." Either way you're in trouble with the bride.
Somewhere in 2001, I came to the conclusion that my memory was so bad and my ability to focus towards the future so poor, that I had to come up with some new way of justifying my inability to do either very well. After a few moments reflection, I was given the comforting epiphany that I had become exceedingly adept at "living in the moment", and accordingly was free from being a slave to the past or conscripted to any particular worry about the future.
"What a gift", some part of my brain mused, "it gives one the ability to do things well in the here and now."
"That's all very nice", offered a more rational quadrant, "but be careful not to get hit by a bus."
Wouldn't life be great if you didn't have to think about reality?
These thoughts led me to some of my favorite words by writer Frederick Buechner : "All moments are key moments, and life itself is Grace..."
All moments ARE key moments, and life itself is indeed Grace when lived in a right relationship with God. But what are the mechanics of the thing? How does God experience time and space and the "history" and "future" they produce from the human perspective?
How does it all "Work"?
Recently in the theological study that is my shower, I was hit with a couple of thoughts that while in no way should be construed as sound theology, (if there is such a thing), helped me explore my own understanding of the "possibilities."
In contemplating the nature of God we often use the metaphor of light - God appearing as a bright and unviewable light in the Old Testament and Christ as the "Light of The World" in the New. What if we were to marry the metaphor with our scientific understandings of light and its relative properties in the universe to try and grasp how God might "experience" it.
While assigning God any sort of physical attribute is surely the heaviest of conjecture, if we are seeking to understand "the workings"of his nature in some manner relevant to our worldly perspective, it seems reasonable to ponder the possibilities.
If the speed of light is truly the fastest possible motion of matter and energy in the universe, does that define a measurement at which God experiences the creation? As for time, we know that by increasing our speed beyond that which light travels, we would experience time more slowly - actually moving "back in time" from a relative perspective.
If someone were to experience the universe "at exactly the speed of light" - then from their perspective, nothing would ever age or slowdown or even begin or end for that matter. God would experience the universe at an "eternal speed", and all moments would truly be key moments - indeed "The Moment." Could it be that all the worst and best of history from our perspective is written indelibly into the pages of eternity? Penned here in the experience of time and space but "heard" as part of some greater story?
What if heaven were that place where we experience the love of God not only in the mystery that it must be, but also through his presence in all the glorious moments of creation where he is accepted and proclaimed? All the love that any mother ever gave a child.... All the sacrifices ever made for someone else in need.... All the tears of joy shed at Love's conquering the hardened heart...
Such a view would then make hell that place where he has not been allowed, and an experience that would be made up of the worst and most horrific moments of "time and space." Where the kind of hate and corruption of the spirit that brought about the events of September 11th are just so many more in an eternal moment of anguish and grief - a moment that scripture describes as "a place where men moan and weep and gnash their teeth."
Sounds like hell to me.
But ours is perhaps not to worry about even that. As a certain minister once told me in a moment of clarity, "I'm not sure I would ever really want to tell anybody, for fear of how they may live their lives if they believed it, but perhaps Christ goes all the way to hell for even the worst of us. We are told he once did. Why wouldn't he do it for all of us in the end? I'm not going to say for certain that he ultimately does or doesn't, but I think the possibility is worth considering..."
As is the possibility that all our moments really are key moments.
And life itself?
Grace to be sure - a gift that could possibly even change the nature of eternity...
Don't waste a moment of it.