Dear Friends,
I hope that all of you who went to the retreat came back feeling refreshed and close to God. One of my favorite times was the guided renewal hike that Wendy put together for us. If you weren't able to join us for the retreat, we each took one or two hours to walk in nature by ourselves, taking with us a set of six cards with scriptures and instructions for prayer. As I began my hike, I reached down to touch the ground, as instructed by the first card. I suddenly felt in awe of the presence of God in and through everything around me. Most of the time I don’t think a lot about dirt. When I do think about dirt, I tend to think about it almost as empty space - space where there could be a plant or a building, but there is not. Saturday, when I bent down to touch the dirt, it struck me as a wildly magical and living thing. On what now seemed to me a more macro level, dirt is full of tiny living things. Smaller than that is the chemical make-up of the soil supporting that life. This part is fascinating and magical all by itself, but what struck me most was smaller than that. I found myself thinking of molecules, atoms, and particles incomprehensible to me like electrons and quarks. Dirt, rocks, and other seemingly inert things are, in reality, buzzing continuously with energy and motion, alive with power that I don’t understand. Not only that, but all creation, seemingly made up of discrete objects and substances contained in their own spaces, is deeply interconnected through staggeringly complex systems of repulsion and attraction. These hopelessly oversimplified and untrained thoughts (I'm not a scientist.) about the physical make-up of the earth made me feel more awake than usual to the omnipresence of God, whose being and power it is that inhabits all these things and animates our world.
This experience brings to mind Paul's speech to the Athenians in Acts 17. After describing God's creation of the world, Paul said, "God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being’" (Acts 17:27-28). I also find myself thinking of God's words to Moses when Moses asked God's name in Exodus 3:14, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh," meaning something like, "I am being."
My train of thought this week is largely due to a question that was submitted for our Real Questions series that I plan to discuss this coming Sunday. "Are there other intelligent life forms in the universe? Are we living in a simulation? How does God play a role if we have parallel universes?" I don't know if there are other intelligent life forms in the universe, if a multiverse exists, or even how one might define reality in order to distinguish it from a simulation. But the deeper (and in my opinion more interesting) question that all of these questions point to is, "What is the nature of reality?" or "What is the nature of existence?" It is due to the submission of this question that my mind has been wandering for the last few weeks through strange and fascinating places where physics and philosophy meet and intermingle. I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to the person who submitted this question. You have sparked in me a delightful curiosity about the nature of God and of the universe, as well as a greater sense of the presence of God, the being one, within me and around me.
I have many more thoughts on this that will have to wait for Sunday. In the meantime, if you are reading this, take a moment right now to be aware of the presence of God in you and around you. Look around at what you can see, whether in nature or man-made. God is the power and the source of being that holds all of this together. Feel what it feels like to inhabit your body. God is the source of your life and your existence. He has given you even the gift of consciousness by which you are aware of all these things. Take a minute to be in awe of the fact that you exist and are able to have these feelings and these thoughts. Take another minute to breathe and just be.
A prayer for today:
God, reveal to me your presence. Enable me to seek you and to find you. Amen.
Love in Christ Always,
Michelle
