Power, Gospel, and Testament

Early morning thoughts while on a slushy walk.

Rose Garden in Winter

Some 'rules' occur to me as I look through the bars at this rose garden. I know it's a rose garden, But it's winter so that's hard to see. A close up would reveal thorns and hips, telltale signs of fruitfulness and beauty. The gate speaks of protection, in this case from deer. I could enter. I chose not to. My running shoes are already wet, so I don't need further warning, and the puddles are about 2-3 inches deep.

Hidden yet perceived is the power of creation - to be fruitful, and to create art, and to warn.

I observe the warnings as if from God. I know they are both human and scientific, but I can't escape my limited perception. Immanence and transcendence of my particular situation is everywhere. How I name my actions and thoughts reveals who I am to myself.

On the left of the image just over midway up is a large quince tree growing in the shadows of an even larger redwood. The redwood soars well above the frame. The quince has also been very fruitful these past 60 years or more. Now it is empty but still filled with promise. We have even made jelly from the windfalls. The fruit itself needs a ladder to reach it. The owner uses some, and the rest goes to other creatures visible and invisible.

At the base of our created order is hidden light and fire. It moves the intelligent root of the trees, rose, fir, or quince. It guides the hand of the artist, the design perceived through measurement, in imitation of creation. It organizes the microbial to support food and consume waste.

My picture above was taken before the sun came out and in the calm before a rushing mighty wind that I hear as I type. So many manifestations of power in nature and all experienced by us and our fellow creatures as we live our lives from whatever start to whatever finish.

What does it all mean? How will the creatures visible to us, our fellow creatures, handle all this generous bounty?

My perception of power is that as light creates time, so no power is stronger than those life-giving streams of light and their ability to form, reveal, and infuse matter. (Interesting article here on the physics of the creation of matter from high energy photon streams.)

This power is available to all creation as time in whatever measure is available equally to all. In time and over a long time, what we call life has come to see itself, to explore all aspects of the created order using the power of light. And to try and write about the governance that everything from bacterium to termite to pride to human community must learn to exercise some sort of governance. Of necessity we are forced into governance by common circumstance. Over time, some forms of our writing have become canonized - regulatory frameworks through which we govern ourselves.

Out of this experience we humans have drawn out over the passage of millennia things like justice, mercy, love, hope, faith, gift, and a host of other related concepts. We live in tension between these powers and forms of government that are fused with other things like inequity, force, abuse, sin, destruction, privilege, luck. I am sure we could list more of these.

Like an electron-positron pair the possibility is that the pressures of mutual opposition could destroy each other. Or like the winter and summer, the possibility is that the negatives and positives could continue creation.

Which do we prefer? What is the character of the preference? And how should the preference be achieved?

Are we beyond evolution to the point that we could choose life? And what would that signify as we continue in the space-time framework we find ourselves in?

This note went in an unexpected direction. My initial thoughts have not reached the conclusion embedded in my title for the post.

The short cut: Power is available to us. We will achieve justice if we use it without force. The good news is that the Mystery called by various names in the Bible will judge with equity what we do materially in this light-infused world. The two testaments are in agreement on both these fronts.

When we meet words in the testaments of whatever stream of thought inside or outside Christendom, what do we make of them? A forceful God who deals out rewards and punishments - God forbid we should think this way. Or a temporal power arising out of light, creating matter that allows the exercise and choice of kindness.

What are the physical, material and spiritual, manifestations of our choices?

Exploitation of the natural world - power abused - results in viral sickness and climate change. The imposition of justice, enforced conformity of human thought and action, results in violence. We see it everywhere, particularly where the measurement of equity is incorrect and the lie is believed. Kindness will cost. In a time of a viral plague, it costs aspects of freedom of movement and open face-to-face communication. 

I like fruitfulness and beauty. I see bounty and opportunity available and not fulfilled. I need protection, and warning, and regulation. I see and enjoy pattern.

I can't draw any more lines. The variety of conflicts is too great for my mind. But the thoughts I have expressed reflect why I continue to believe that the light and the creation is good. And there is an opposite that is not good. I have eaten of the tree in the garden. I hope I can still be useful. It's definitely a hard prospect either way.