Saturday, November 21, 2009

(2) The Attractor

Unless we are an atheist, most of us ponder on the nature
of our existence as related to God. And if we study history,
cultural anthropology, evolutionary theory, it doesn't take
much to fall into wondering why we seem to be moving
forward--albeit, even in the midst of dreadful steps backward,
we eventually continue our march towards complexity and
greater levels of consciousness.

Can it all be just random? Mistakes, mutations? We do
definitely see mutations when it comes to our genetic code.
Perhaps this is the freedom we are allowed in order to evolve?
Gads! I hate speculation. But here I am, basking in its midst.

If somehow we come to believe that there is an Intelligence
that stands behind all this process we call Creation, indeed
what we call Life, well is it in our human nature to depersonalize
this Intelligence? Some of us do, but most of us don't.
After all, we are "persons."

So maybe it was not so outrageous that Teilhard tended to
personalize this Cosmic Plenum as the Cosmic Christ.

At this point, I felt that I stood at a crossroad. Where might
I turn in this regard? Somehow I felt empty just leaving
this Intelligence as a cold "there," if you will. Though I knew
that whatever I might choose as a personal name for "God,"
it was my choice. I had grown beyond simply culturally
inheriting a religious concept that endowed a Name upon
the Creator.

Still I harkened back to Teilhard's Cosmic Christ. I remembered
the thrill that I felt when I first saw the Pantocrator, the Christ in
Majesty, in that Byzantine-style cathedral. A mosaic of the
Lord of the Universe is just that, but it conveys the portrait of
thought conceived through long lines of generations--to reach
this point of theological discovery in their minds.

Pehaps we will never know *exactly* the nature or personality
of our Creator, but it's possible to spy a steady train of thought
operable down through the ages. Perhaps God works in our
minds, drawing us forward--ever towards more sophisticated
concepts of who this great Cosmic Plenum might be?

I suspect we will never tire trying to answer this question.