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| Denser, acrylic on canvas, 10 1/2" x 14", Steve Brown 2022 |
Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, so much more...
-- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939
American GothicThey stand there
before their American wood
home waiting to be captured
in pigment
real for the children
and grandchildren.
Not to be made immortal.
No. Heavens no. Not that.
Leave that for those with stars
in their Broadway eyes
Or lubricated political mouths
slipping into smiles of greasy ease
at the county fair
prior to later deception
at the county courthouse.
No. They’ll just stand there proper
for a proper picture, unaware
galaxies of light spiral
spectacularly inside them pulsating
against the cold stoic glass
of their eyes,
No. They’ll just stand there proper
for a proper picture, unaware
galaxies of light spiral
spectacularly inside them pulsating
against the cold stoic glass
of their eyes,
universes within universes
waiting.
--Steve Brown 2022
I once was unhappily positive that the answer to that question was a solid "No, I will not continue after my heart stops beating". I thought I was being brave in accepting an obvious reality--that we each are bright sparks in what for each of us will be an eternal night after our individual light goes out. Of course, as we won't comprehend that eternal night when dead, it doesn't really matter. Or, so I tried to convince myself, unsuccessfully. The truth is knowing whether or not I will continue after this life has always been my utmost concern. Everything else has been a distraction. I don't think it was ever so much a fear of my own demise as just wanting there to be a purpose behind we are.
Over time, I have realized the material evidence is pretty equal for both sides of the argument, which is as it should be. That leaves freedom of choice at the center of all things, even something as primal as defining the nature of reality itself. If there was absolute evidence on either side, would faith really be a virtue? Would agency really exist? God would not be a choice if He could be scientifically proven. Likewise, atheism would not be a choice if one could prove there's no intelligent design behind everything. Our inability to prove the meaning of life ultimately gives life its meaning.
Perhaps you don't quite believe just how free the choice really is. Here's a short thought experiment, which, although I know everyone has done it at one time or another, tends to get pushed away because we don't like the uncertainty that is at the heart of our agency. Here's a reminder:
In *A Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson does a wonderful job in trying to take us back to that magic moment, the birth of everything. Being the honest investigator that he is, he admits from the get-go, it is simply impossible to imagine our origin because the infinite scale of things. Yet, he gets as close to accomplishing that goal as probably anyone has. He starts at the small end of things:
No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming, is a proton. It is just way too small.
A proton is an infinitesimal part of an atom, which is itself of course an insubstantial thing. Protons are so small that a little dib of ink like the dot on this i can hold something in the region of 500,000,000,000, rather more than the number of seconds contained in half a million years. So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.
He then sets the stage for the big bang:
Now imagine if you can (and of course you can't) shrinking one of these protons down to a billionth of its normal size into a space so small it would make a proton look enormous. Now pack into that tiny, tiny space about an ounce of matter. Excellent. You are ready to start a universe.
I'm assuming of course that you wish to build an inflationary universe. If you'd prefer instead to build a more old-fashioned, standard Big Bang universe, you'll need additional materials. In fact, you will need to gather up everything there is--every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation--and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity.
In either case, get ready for a really big bang. Naturally, you will wish to retire to a safe place to observe the spectacle. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to retire to because outside the singularity it is no where. When the universe begins to expand, it won't be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes.
As mind-boggling as all that is, it can't compare with the tortuous thought that unravels from two simple questions: 1) What preceded that first moment? and 2) Who or what lit the fuse? What made that immensely compressed dot of all-matter unfold into the universe we now see? What was that initial cause that led ultimately to the effect known as I.
Using only science as his guide, Bill Bryson can't take you there. Nor can anyone else. Thus the need for the concept of God. God explains the unexplainable.
Or so you think. But say there is a God--and I must confess here, I know there is one, but not through my intellect. It still doesn't solve the problem. So, we have this infinitely dense speck of matter just waiting for some omniscient being to say Let there be light! And he does, because he can, he is after all, the great I am. But wait, how did he get there? Who created him? You, of course can say his father, but what then?
See the problem? See why you are totally free to believe whatever you want to believe. Agency is our birthright built into that most fundamental of all questions, stated so eloquently by an old professor of mine, Dr. Emory Estes: I, why? / Why I?
I want to ask an even more basic question:
Why do humans even have a concept of a soul? Why do we believe we continue after we die?
Thinking as the humans that we are, there are what at first seem like obvious answers that satisfy the material view of the universe. We don't want to accept our own end. We don't want to be separated forever from loved ones. So, we invented the idea of the soul so that we could continue forever.
Although, at first, those answers seem to work from a materialist perspective, I don't think they hold up when consciously viewing ourselves as simply links in the food chain--eating and reproducing machines that also function as meals for larger carnivores.
Why does a cow need to conceptualize either mortality or eternity in order live, begat, and become steak? Likewise, if we are just part of evolution, why do we? Under such conditions, why would our brains evolve in such a way as to conceptualize a notion of a soul? There's more important ways for the brain to grow when our only function is to pass on our genes. If anything, the idea of a soul hampers a system built on survival of the fittest because it lifts the mind out of the realm of instinct, where all my thoughts automatically serve propagating the dominance of my genes, to a realm where I'm morally responsible for the well being of not only myself but others too, including genetic competitors, even other species. The development of the idea of a soul may indeed be good for the species, and I believe it is, but it's nothing like how a mind should work in a system based solely on passing on one's genetic material.
To me there is no biological for reason for a brain to either comprehend death or to dream up a free pass around it.
For me, now, the mere fact that man has asked that most fundamental of all questions, "I, why? / Why I?" suggest we are not only human, we are denser.
The fact that we can intellectually choose "To be" or "not to be" suggests to me we are more than our biology. Mold does not decide its own fate, and even if scientists someday find out it does, that still won't answer my question: How does conceptualizing a soul prosper the human as an animal species?
I can't come up with an answer.
However, if we are indeed more than flesh and bone, the concept of a soul becomes essential to our identity because it is our identity. Our body and our brain are just the technology we use to get around in this mortal realm. Our soul knows its own source, and so, since the beginning of time, all cultures have had some concept of the eternal and everlasting. All creation myths begin not with a beginning, but rather, an organizing of what already was, a continuation of something prior, souls moving from one realm to another, rather than magically popping into existence from nothing.
In the Genesis account, creation begins with God declaring Let there be light. Yet, prior to that, "the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep." In fact, God seems to be examining the matter reflectively before beginning his work: "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters". It is as if He needed to comprehend what already was before he could light the spark to create all that is.
Also, after Adam and Eve transgress, which is an important act, bringing light unto them, he says, "Behold, the man is become of as one of us, to know good and evil...". If there was only God in the beginning there would be no "waters" for the spirit of God to move upon, and there would be no "us" for man to become like, only a single, lonely "I".
Like in other creation myths, Genesis is not the start of things, but rather an organizing or perhaps reorganizing of what already was, just as Zeus didn't start things for the Greeks.
Admittedly evolution makes any concept of any god more personal than the clock-maker god (that simply sets things in motion and then watches from a safe distance) difficult to comprehend. If we are made in the image of the Gods, and like the Gods, we know the difference between good and evil, at what point did we become human enough to be "like" the Gods in that long journey from single cell organism floating in the sea to man kneeling at the alter before his maker? And to not believe in evolution at this point is absurd. We breed dogs, grow tissue, clone sheep, etc., all based on the basic genetic principles of evolution. At this point, it's like refusing to believe in gravity when we sling-shot spacecraft precisely from planet to planet using that force for our benefit.
Perhaps that is why John Steinbeck, who definitely believed in spirits, found it difficult to believe in a personalized God. In Log from the Sea of Cortez, he writes the following:
Why do we dread to think of ourselves as a species? Can it be that we are afraid what we might find? That human self-love would suffer too much and that the image of God might prove to be a mask? This could be only partly true, for if we could cease to wear the image of a kindly, bearded, interstellar dictator, we might find ourselves true images of his kingdom, our eyes the nebulae, and universes in our cells.
Many years ago--I believe it was 1996--I had a dream where I asked Christ this question: "How can I believe in a personal God when I know evolution is real?"
He in turn answered me with a stern but loving rhetorical question: "How dare you think you can know the nature of a system you are part of better than I, the one who created it?"
When I woke up and thought about it, I had two images come to mind. The first was of a fish in a fish tank. The fish can know and understand his tank fairly well through observance. He might even be able to tell the waterfall and bubbler are providing him with the oxygen he needs to live. He can even know a little beyond his fish tank. He can see us out there walking around. He might be able to hear the TV in the next room. He might even notice there's a wire connecting his waterfall and bubbler to a socket in the wall. However, it is impossible for him, in his little closed system, to comprehend the power plant miles away, let alone the coal, or fauna that lived millions of years ago, that was buried and compressed under tremendous pressure and now fuels his little world.
Likewise, we as mortals will never fully understand a system we are part of. Our inability to prove God exists scientifically doesn't void his existence anymore than the fish's inability to conceptualize the plants that died millions of years ago that fuel his world voids their existence.
The next image that came to me was a square building divided into four equally sized rooms placed on a cliff above the ocean. Each room has one window looking out in a different direction and a door to each adjoining room. The inhabitant in each room looks out and sees something different. One may look out and say the world is a steep hill covered by windblown trees. The other may say, No, it's a lush green pasture, and one may say, No, it's water and sky as far as the one can see, while yet another says, No, it's mostly a parking lot made of asphalt. The inhabitants fight and bicker over the nature of the universe through the intercom without ever bothering to check out the views in the other rooms simply by walking through the doors available to them.
Likewise, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim, and Christian, not to mention the Atheist, are all looking out a unique window and seeing something real without realizing they are missing out on a more complete reality by each refusing to leave their comfortable little windows.
In the early twentieth century fear kept us from fully accepting ourselves as but one species among many creations. That fear had deadly consequences for so much of our fellow biological brothers and sisters in other species, and ultimately, could still bring about our own demise.
Yet, I wonder if now our fear of being more than our biology is doing the same thing?
Why do we dread to think of ourselves as more than our biology? Can it be that we are afraid what we might find? That human divine potential would be a great responsibility to carry, and that our perceived limitations might prove to be a mask? Is our refusal to accept we might be more than our biology an easy way out of divinely given responsibilities--to know good from evil--and act morally accordingly?
Why does this matter? And why does it belong in this book?
Things are going to get tuff. Of this, I am sure. This book is not simply about drawing attention to the problems of climate change. The time to do that has long passed, and plenty of people already warned us. We simply didn't listen. Still, there are nonbelievers out there. I will do my best to convince them that the world isn't flat and that climate change is real.
However, this book is also about how to thrive spiritually, mentally, physically and socially during hard times. It's about embracing now on its own terms, head-on, and with joy, no matter what reality now dishes out.
For me, that can't be done, without each of us knowing on a gut level where we belong in the universe.
So, I'm not trying to change any world-views here. If you are a happy atheist, and that belief will serve you well in hard times, carry on, I wish you well.
However, if you are an unhappy atheist, like I once was, bravely accepting what to you feel like is a dreadful world view simply because you think all the evidence points in that direction, then this chapter is for you. I was bullied intellectually into believing a lie: that all the evidence supported one side of the argument, that all one could do in a world where everything is nada y pues nada is find a clean well-lighted place and wait out the storm, which isn't really a storm at all, but a constant swirling of meaningless activity day after day, year after year, eon after eon. That that is the only intellectually honest way to conceive a universe is complete bullshit. I was lied to. I listened and gave up my own agency and gave up my religion in the process.
There are thousands and thousands of recorded near-death experiences. In some ways they contradict. I don't think there's any way to prove any one religion is true based on them. If you research them for that purpose, you'll be sorely disappointed. Whatever you believe, you will come across an account that contradicts your belief. However, all these stories of life beyond the veil have more in common than contradictions. Of course, as of right now, they are only testimonies. There is no direct way to verify that the reports are true. But science uses perception data all the time when hard evidence isn't available. The social sciences wouldn't exist without people's perceptions. Your doctor doesn't discount your headache until he can run a brain scan.
So, if you felt that same pressure I did--that you can't be an intelligent person and believe in God also, and gave in, or feel you must give in now, then, Yes, this book is for you. I want to shake out the universe in all its glitter and glory in a way that makes you see your individual spark is never, ever snuffed out and that joy is our birthright under every condition.
Joy free from circumstance. I guess that is my ultimate theme. How to get to, and stay in, a place where we transcend the reality of the moment (which is in constant flux anyway) and enjoy reality on its own terms. How do I get to a place where I am fundamentally the same attending the wedding of my child as I am sitting at the bottom of a muddy trench, facing enemy fire? I do believe rare individuals get to that place. I believe Gandhi almost did. I want to get there too, or at least as close as I possibly can. I think that's all I've ever wanted, which made navigating everyday life sometimes difficult. I didn't want the college degree, the important job, the wealth, the security, the fame that most people yearn for. Parts of me did, but the dream wasn't sustainable because because part of me knew I was fronting. All I have really ever wanted is to be is me--purely, securely me--fully connected to, and present in, whatever reality I find myself living. I know it's kind of vein, but really all I've ever wanted to be is a little I am. I don't want the responsibility or glory of being the big I am, but I do want to know His nature and to be as close to Him in my nature as I can be in my own way.
That is not a bad desire at end of the world--if that is what we are experiencing. It's also not a bad desire if this strange time is just a big hiccup, and after a while, things return to normal.
That is why this chapter is here. I assume you are at least a little like me, and want to feel calm during the storm. I want to convince you that there is peace in any circumstance so that you can access it when you need it most. Of course, I want to convince myself of the same. Any honest preacher will admit knowing and doubting are bound together forever, and that a simple flip of the coin can turn one's outlook upside down in a moment, and that the real audience for every sermon is the self. We think and write not what others need most, but what we need most ourselves.
That doesn't mean every lesson is a lesson in hypocrisy. It doesn't mean every financial adviser struggles with his or her own finances, or that every preacher is a closet atheist. No, it doesn't mean that at all. But any honest financial adviser does know after a couple of bad choices, or just a string of bad luck, if he isn't careful, he could easily find himself spiraling out of control, doing everything opposite to everything he advises, trying to right his world in a moment of panic at the possibility of losing it all. And the same holds true for the preacher.
I have the agency to chose who I want to be at this moment. I write to remember my choice at this given moment--always.
I am human. I am also denser. Galaxies of light and potential spiral around inside me, waiting to get out, to add their light to the universe that surrounds. I will behave accordingly. And when I behave accordingly, I give others permission to do the same.
Likewise, when I cower in fear and shame and disbelief, my world closes in and darkness surrounds me, and others pick up on that energy, feel it, absorb it, and believe they must do the same.
I write to keep the light stronger than the darkness so that I don't miss the beauty surrounding me. That is what this book must be about or I have failed completely.
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