Editorial- What is God

Editorial- What is God.

Scientists- well, some of them anyway- argue there is no God. They feel they have shown there is no need for God, so there isn't one. They say the universe can generate, even must generate on it's own. I have a few arguments against some of that, but that is not my point here. How we define God is.

Atheists, a cynical lot, have taken up the religion of "no-god". Really more cultural and political than theological, but not always. Frankly I think agnosticism makes sense, but atheism...not so much. Agnosticism says "Not sure", atheism say "There isn't". You can't prove a negative so they must be claiming fact through belief.

Believers, are often the defensive flip-side of atheists for the most part, though not always. At least many believers these days seem to be living a religion of cultural defense. Hardly the religion I was brought up in. Really not a religion of faith at all. Just a cultural war. And frankly I never understood  why belief would make the difference of salvation anyway. Would God punish me for believing what I thought was true? Right or wrong He would love me anyway, would He not?

Me? I happen to think we have a weak, quite shallow definition of God. Put simply, we are wrong about what God is. And therein lies the problem. Am I right about my definition? Probably not. Much too simplistic. God is most likely far beyond whatever we can perceive. Hopefully I'm just a smidgen closer.

Is God The Creator? Yes, I suppose, but that is not what he "is".
Is "He" a correct way to refer to him? No, I don't think so, but we have limited language and limited minds. Forgivable.
Is God outside looking in? No, I think its more like we are inside looking outward.
Are there miracles? A profoundly stupid question. What isn't a miracle? I call the world a mundane miracle, not because it is mundane, but because people generally are. They are too blinded by their everyday life to see the miracle that lies beyond their doorstep.
Does he break his own laws, (in fact, break his miracle), to perform what we call a miracle? God, knows. I don't. I think there is something much more subtle here than we generally can perceive.
Does God actively engage in our lives? Again, I think we are thinking too anthropomorphically. I think the better way to view this is in terms of connections with the sacred. The greater we connect, the greater the connection; much the same as virtue is its own reward.

So what "is" God? Or rather what do I think the better definition of "God" might be? Well, "All". Everything. We live in God. Frankly I don't see how anything can exist outside of God. If God exists, existence can only be made up of his substance. How could it be otherwise?
Does this mean we are God? Hardly. Though we are made of the essence of God, just as we are and every element in our bodies are made of the essence of stars and novas and supernovas.
Are the scientists of a certain view wrong? Only in their limited range of vision. If you view God as something other, or outside, separate, no matter who or what you are, scientist or preacher, you've limited your options significantly, and limited God. You've made God in our image.
What if there is no God? Well, there is the question of can something come from nothing, or better put, can existence come from non-existence? Scientist say yes. But what if you operate from outside of space and time. A non-place of absolute non-existence. A profound nothing, nowhere, not! No energy, no laws, no quantum physics, no vacuum, no void. This may have in fact never existed. Perhaps it always was. In my mind a close definition of God.

Einstein is often slighted for his use of the word "God", and his views on cosmic religion. I think he referred to himself as a religious agnostic, or some such thing. I guess I'd refer to myself as a non-religious believer, but religious agnostic would work just as well. Einstein, and a few other scientists believe they see, not a god, but a profound sacredness in the cosmos. A beauty and elegance in the math. An impossibility in the physics. One that connects all things. One that has created (or is) a set of conditions whereby if one little inkling of a variant were introduced -in any number of things-, nothing could exist. If I were a good writer and took the time I would list a few of these things. Believe me, they are there and they are an amazement! If one factor were changed just the smallest bit stars never would have been created. If changed the other way, they would have lasted a very short time. How can conditions be so perfect? The physics so harmonious?

So yes, I think there is a God, and no because I think the term too limited and locked into our own image. He is much more than that. A profound inherent sacredness in the universe I think is closer to the truth. And this sacredness is the basis for all there is. This is what we can experience; that profound inherent sacredness. This is what we can and do connect with on occasion. Einstein did not believe in God, but he did recognize this profundity that he saw in much of his work, and realized that there was something there that was sacred at the most fundamental level of all existence. I recognize that too. That to me "is" God.

A World of Dust

A World of Dust

These are the days when angels whisper, “This is a world of dust.”

Here light and darkness consume each other; fade into each other; and drain into a hidden place. Here entropy rules the day; the great leveler, the third hand of Shiva, the destroyer of worlds. It has gripped our throats and slowly squeezes our life away like the dark night overthrows the day.

Order rules no more! The laws bit by bit break. Water and earth become brown, white and black – gray. The physics of the world eats its self. No more do the old bonds hold. Chaos takes center stage where ordered distinction once held court. How is it the universe comes apart?

First a frayed thread, then a seam, the garment falls into dust at our feet. Time is over-ruled, place looses meaning.

All the world, all the universe, see the coming of this dark night of death, this Passover where Lamb’s blood will save none. From one end to the other it comes, advancing on all there is. It is a lost brother, a twin, come to claim his place after a long and arduous Odyssey to strange and unknown lands. Dark matter returns.

The symmetry is breaking, no longer us and him, no longer a separate peace. Now only the peace of half-darkness, half-being , no being at all. It creeps across the galaxies, a plague, a cloud of dust, snuffing out their lights, their distinctions, their swirl of life. We see them blink into a smothering extinction, and it comes. It comes to choke us as well. We smell the first of it. The dark stench of nothingness.

We merge our differences, our pluses and minuses, our is’s and opposites, whatever that may be. The particle and lost anti-particle, the polar opposites, join to become…what? A dust of no distinction. The differences erased, distinctions now forever denied, the mundane miracle we knew and lived as life but too oft ignored, evaporates before our eyes. It is to be no more. Such a shame.

Dark matter creeps across space and time and we haven’t even known what it is, if it was even really there, but now we know. Now we fear.

Where have you been my dark brother? What things have you seen? Did you live as we did? A mundane miracle revealed? Once we were one, joined at the hip before our separate ways we went. Now we re-unite with no great love and become one again. Two joined brothers bound in a struggle to destroy the other and in doing so destroy themselves as well. Ahh, it was bound to be I suppose. Opposites attract. But for that while…, that brief while, that while of eons, it was a miracle! And God did rule in his proper place. Don’t you agree?

A Parliament of Winds, A Congress of Tides

The Skagit Delta is a place of dikes and river sloughs, farmer's fields and corn stalks, scrub, trees, muck, willows and catails, wind and rain, gray clouds and snow geese, herons, merlins, red-tail hawks and eagles, seagulls and seals and sapsuckers, duck-hunters and birders and game wardens, floods and ancient logs. It is a secret place where river meets saltwater, sand meets muck, land meets water, current meets tide, and it is difficult to tell here which of these are which, for they are so intermingled; one does not exist seperate from the other. It is like the world dance of chaos and order, they dance the same dance, at times they seem to unite, to blend, to throw off their distinctions and become one.

Scientists have long sought after the ghostly neutrino. Generated in the very heart of the sun it can pass through the Earth as easily as a beam of light through a pane of glass. The question has been: does it have zero mass or some infintesimally small degree of mass? The current thought is that it has phases or "species" of which there are three; two of no mass, one of mass.

It is a binary world of oft muddied waters. And so it is with our lives; we are the uncertain neutrino, uncertain of whether we matter or not, and what our purpose always is, we are the blend of chaos and order, a mingled identity, blown about by a parliament of winds, washed here and there by a congress of tides.

Now Pipes the Bitter Wind

O Sappho, thy love of beauty is the beauty of thy love.
With wine-dark seas for eyes and soft sea breeze for hair
Your smile is the golden sunrise, warm, fresh, and, fair.
No flower seeks a need,
No sparrow sings its chorus with thought of varied paths;
They simply are for Love’s sake,
Devoted as to music is the flute’s reed.
Thy passions are divinely guided,
Their expressions sound and fair.
Not a single drop of morning dew outlasts the noonday sun;
But your words of love so pleasing are yet but two and a half millennia young.

Now pipes the bitter wind! Love so frail a thing!
Where are the gods above? Where the hope? The wisdom of days?
On the far horizon an angry star burns! The seas will soon hide it,
But not quench it.
The sins and shame of Man prevails,
But it is a thing that would kill itself. Nothing will remain.
Perhaps a seed has hid itself away… perhaps it will grow with the spring rains
And bloom again someday.
And perhaps a bee as well; hidden for a time beneath the sheltering ground;
It will rise and find its way to the bloom, and thereupon will be a world again!
The sunlight will mean something, and the moon as well!
No longer just an angry star bent upon exposing us for what we are.
The seas will freshen, new winds will blow… no longer pipes a bitter wind,
Love will find its way again.
I once knew a maid who sang a song. Her gentle tune moved me so.
Her lyrics spoke so true; I could not turn away!
Her beauty grew.
And now with all the harm and hate it is her that comes to mind.
Perhaps these harsh unspeakable times shall be sang to the sweetest of tunes;
The seed and flower, butterfly and moon;
and the wind will pipe a less bitter tune.
And Sappho rule the heart again.

Long ago our fathers said

We have heard of things like this; stories told of past worlds and worlds to come.
Stories of moon dying...suns giving birth to other suns.
We sit. We watch and wonder what this is.
We know it is all we can do. Watch and wait and wonder.
What will the world become? What will remain?
Will the way of the fathers be regained?

With each new sun a new wind blows. It whispers secrets not quite heard.
Children's voices; a woman's wail; a chant sacred and beautiful.
My friends...we talk, low and still. Not wanting to disturb the works of creation.
A peace encircles us, knowing we are witnesses, the criers of myths to come.
We are in the womb. And when we come forth, it shall be born from us.
A retelling of truth.

The day declines, but in the eventide more and more distant suns are born.
So many suns for the world.
We long for the true night to return when no more suns are born.
My sisters whisper, "When will it end? What will ever be again?"
A cooler breeze blows. The thunder of worlds cease.
The last colors of the day fades away. Now, only the stars remain.
My sisters and I gather our blankets about us, and shelter together against the night, and follow where dreams are meant to go.

Beneath a Porcelain Sky

Beneath a porcelain sky, wintry white and blue and steely gray, the Earth holds its beauty tight resisting the slow decay of man’s advance across what was there and what now remains. The nearby mountains a patchwork, white snow fields lay bare what is bare next to wintergreen stands of reprieved timber. And in that patchwork I see the homeless run for shelter into another’s territory; they become densely compacted as surely as do we ourselves. Death looms in such a plot of race for survival. I blame no one, but we are a short-sighted lot. We are employed to weave a noose with which to hang ourselves. Ah, but it pays the bills for now, and what the future brings is the future’s concerns. There are solutions, but none which we are ready to employ. For now it is fodder for the politician. The problem is there, but the spin is an untruth stretched to a lie. But what can I do? I walk the dikes, paddle the river, climb the hills, explore the tidelands. It is my own soul I seek to find. Time enough for that at least. Perhaps it helps in some small way, but it gives meaning to me. I am my larger self. I become what I always was and will be. Connected. A piece of the whole. In the end we will all know this, when we touch the larger shore. But what a shame to see this Earthy beauty fade. It skin grows gray. It is wrinkled, it’s eyes become pools of clouds. It's voice a mere tremor, shaky and faint. Perhaps it has finished its task. Perhaps I have nearly finished mine as well.

Vaux's Swifts

Swifts! What a fascinating bird they are. They take flight at dawn and remain aloft until sunset. They cannot perch. They fly faster than any other bird in a straight, powered flight at a top speed of 105mph. They may fly 500 miles from their nest before returning. From a distance they appear to be swallows to the untrained eye, but are vastly different. They fly higher, faster, at greater distances and their closest relative is the hummingbird. Close up they may look like a Batman version of a bird. Their eyes are large and sunken, protected by a baffle of feathers to the fore, to protect their eyes against being hit by the insects they eat. At night they gather together and cling to vertical surfaces like bats do on cave ceilings.

There are two types of swifts that visit our area, the pacific northwest; the Black Swift and the Vaux's Swift. The Black Swift nests and roosts behind waterfalls, and the Vaux's Swift nests and roosts in upright hollow snags and chimneys. In both these cases the conditions must be just right.

The Black Swift may best describe why these environments are musts for nesting and roosting. The Black Swift is rather rare in our area. A nest has never been found in Washington. What is needed is a waterfall that provides room behind the waterfall, for obvious reasons, a surface that provides enough grip or voids the be able to cling for both birds and nests. The waterfall should face west to catch the sun at sunset. The reason for this is that the adults are on the wing all day catching insects. During this time the young is receiving no food. The waterfall provides the coolness to put the young into torpor, a half-hibernation state. The late sun brings them out of this state to feed when the adults return from the days feeding. Their nests are made of moss and mud, and unlike the Vaux's, there may be several nests to a waterfall.

The Vaux's Swift, on the other hand, may have a gathering of 21,000 birds in a chimney at a time, but there is only ever one nest per chimney. Frank Wagner Elementary School in Monroe, Wa, the place where I was introduced to the swifts this year had around 12,000 birds at it peak. When I got there they had dwindled down to around 2000 birds a night. Sumas Old Custom House is another great spot to watch them. To satisfy the roosting habits of the Vaux's the chimney needs to have a rough surface, (or seams), such as old brick. It needs to not be in use as an active chimney. It cannot have an opening at the bottom such as the tulip chimney in Mt Vernon, but only an entrance at the top.

The gathering begins about an hour before sunset. You begin seeing them at height, few in number at first, then more and more. You will see them start to swirl in a large cloud of birds, then disperse, and swirl again. The closer to sunset you get the larger in number they become, and more and more birds will make practice dives at the chimney, none going in. Again, they will gather, go into a great swirling cloud and suddenly disperse. Suddenly they will be nowhere in sight, and again, they will be. Perhaps 15-20 minutes before sunset on or two will drop into the chimney. At sunset they will make a great swirl like a black dust-devil and the first group will drop in. Ten minutes after sunset the greatest grouping will swirl into what looks like a black tornado, like something out of the Wizard of Oz, and it will look like they are being vacuumed into the void. A truly amazing sight!! Twenty minutes after sunset and the last few stragglers will finally flutter down into the roost.

Inside they cling to the walls and the backs of others, like a great thick build-up of soot. And there they stay until sometime around dawn where they climb back up the walls, and not having the ability to perch, they drop off the edge of the lip, catch the air in their wings, and off they go for a full days flight.

How cool is that?