My nature, the true nature of the universe, of Being, and My relation to human beings, to their role and destiny, is complex. Einstein’s theory of relativity is child’s play by comparison. An adequate understanding cuts across some of the categories human beings find most natural, though they are really profoundly “unnatural” (and I mean that in the eerie sense). They are warped; they often represent disorders of the soul, distortions of Being.
My favorite pizza place is closed. It still has a website, but no information about why it is closed and for how long. I found a nearby place called “Nico’s.” As I waited for my food, I looked the many photos covering the wide expanse of one wall. They appeared to be family members, mainly daughters, one of whom was at work in the kitchen. Near where you put in your order was a plaque: “I have my doubts about people with million dollar plans/ And a minimum wage work ethic.” You tell ‘em, Nico!
Karma is the Hindu idea that actions, both good and bad, have consequences for a person’s character and fate.
Human beings must learn a lesson. They are not in this life to sit in the lap of luxury. It is a challenge, a test. They can only grow through suffering. I too can only grow through suffering. The main suffering is through the consequences of their own actions. That is the most intense suffering, the kind of suffering that leads to suicide.
“Lord, Pherecydes also says the world was composed of opposites.”
There can be no love without difference, no harmony or balance without opposing items or forces, no magnetism without the magnet and its object, and so on.
Mystic merging is not quite right. You (people) need to live out your lives in relation to, in concert with Me, but it would serve no purpose, karmic or otherwise, for you to get lost in Me, like a drop of water in the sea.
I knew that I wanted to love Abigail, not to merge into her, or to have her merge into me. There is not just unity, but creative tension as well.
“Lord, what was there before? What motivates the act of creation?”
I received the following words and images which I recorded in my notes.
“A feeling of loneliness, of searching, reaching—not yet a Person. Expanding into the great emptiness of Nothing, which is ‘infinitely empty’ far beyond (far more empty than) empty spaces. ‘Who am I? What am I? Am I an I? What is an I?’ A chaotic feeling of the infinite rushing at the edges.”
“Lord, why did eternity ‘shatter’ in this way? Did the still, self-sufficient stuff explode?”
I received the sense: “Brittle, crystalline, too perfect, static, isolated, removed, alone, bored, incomplete. The eternal already had the potential to be a Person but could not do so without creating time.”
And I also got the feeling that God desperately wants to be understood.
I remembered Abraham Lincoln’s story about the man who was tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. “If it weren’t for the honor of the thing,” the man said, “I would rather have walked.” And I had seen the war movies, “You will have the honor of leading the assault.” Some honors aren’t worth it.
I did feel the honor. God was about to put His seal on this role for me, a role more suitable for a real Elijah. I felt a swell of pride, as I was being told this, and immediately the line went dead. Ego had broken the connection.
“So I should read the scriptures of the major religions?”
Yes, I want you to read the early spiritual history of mankind. I will lead you to which readings. I would like you to pray as you read them and take notes as directed.
I grew up at a time when “man” and “mankind” referred to both men and women, and God spoke to me in my own vernacular.
“Lord, You said I was to tell Your story ‘from the inside out.’ But reading the scriptures is ‘from the outside in.’”
Yes, tell My story as I tell it to you. The only purpose for reading is to give you reference points for understanding My story.
My friend, Alasdair MacIntyre, died this year. I call him my friend, although our paths crossed only intermittently. I first met him, when he was speaking in Boulder. “I may be a member of the Moral Majority,” he told me. Well, I was too, in a similarly modulated way. Later, when After Virtue appeared on the cover of TIME magazine, I asked him whether he had been prepared for the celebrity. “Not at all,” he said, “not in the least.” But he took it in stride and it served him and his world audience well.
Alasdair owed me nothing. We had never been colleagues or in any other special relationship. Nevertheless, he offered a generous endorsement whenever I asked for it. A few years ago, as he was growing older, lest I leave something important unsaid, I send him a note thanking him for his many kindnesses.
He wrote back that he owed the greater debt to me. For what? For having shared my God experience with him. Though defending one set of philosophical battlements after another over the years, he came, before the end, to have an open soul. God bless him!
I have been behind – or barely keeping up – on several important fronts. Here is the brief explanation I sent a friend some weeks ago, shortly after Abigail broke a hip, minutes before we were to present papers at the NE AAR:
I have been overwhelmed since the first May 2 mishap. We had a second episode, after being released from Acute Rehab, when, while at home doing rehab with occasional helpers, Abigail’s was extremely weak. They measured her blood pressure: 60/40! I have never heard of so low a blood pressure. There was another drama, which I will spare you, that delayed our calling 911, but when we did, they could barely believe that she was sitting up, able to talk to them. They immediately put in two pints of blood and another pint a day or two later. They were not sure of the source of the bleeding but it turned out to be a bleeding ulcer. They cauterized it. That didn’t quite work, so they did it again. She is now at home and has resumed rehab exercises that may last for many weeks. For me, the impact has been as much emotional as well as being somewhat run ragged. When I fell in love, I was aware that I had a new vulnerability. I have learned to live alone – after a divorce, that can be a relief – but, having found my true love, it would be immeasurably harder to go on alone. That concern has taken the stuffing out of me.
As I now reflect on events, I recall Abigail’s asking the nurses, in a stream of medical queries, “tell me, why do bad things happen to good people?” They smiled and shook their heads. Years ago, she had asked her friend, the Jewish philosopher Michael Wyschogrod. His answer: “Our people on working on it and hope to have an answer soon.” Although, in God: An Autobiography and in Radically Personal, I find clues, this is and remains the unanswerable question.
__________________________________________
Explore more reflections in God: An Autobiography and Radically Personal