Debating Hawking's Rational Eye

 


I sat down and meditated the other day and saw an Egyptian's eye, perfectly almond and outlined in ebony.  Other eyes came up.  One particular eye I remember is the one trapped behind an angled brow, frigid and piercing. It was Stephen Hawking's eye, when he declared there was no God.

My husband and I watched the documentary on the Science channel one evening a while ago. In one scene, Hawking is in a wheelchair in a hall where there are elegant paintings and wooden floors.  There is a narrator who expounds upon Hawking's thoughts and there are graphics of space stuff and black holes shooting toward us on the television. Stephen Hawking's reasoning proceeds as thus: A black hole distorts time; a black hole can stop time. Inside a black hole, time does not exist.  Before the universe existed, there was only the black hole. If time does not exist in the black hole, than there is no creator, because a creator would need time to exist and create.

Huh. 

He continues, "There is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.  This leads me to a profound realization; there is probably no heaven and no afterlife either.  We have this one life to appreciate the Grand Design of the Universe and for that I am extremely grateful."

OK, hold on a minute here.  Doesn't Grand Design imply a Grand Designer? I don't want to get into semantics or the Evolution/Creation debate. If you ask me, one of God's grand designs was to set evolution in motion; it's creationism on automatic, but that's another essay entirely.  What I want to debate is not only using reason to find God, but attitude. The ego, through science and technology, tempts us into thinking we can build Towers of Babel, but the humbler, more reverent approach to God--which can be found in science and the arts, poetry in particular--is more appropriate for our finite minds.

Hawking uses if-then reasoning in his theory on the non-existence of God, and there's a boatload of established science on black holes, space, and time to back it up. But the tenet overall seems a bit hasty and oversimplified, and I wonder what Einstein would have said of the theory. Einstein claimed that he himself comprehended a tiny portion "of the reason that manifests itself in nature" and he had great reverence for it: "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestation of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty--it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense and this alone, I am a deeply religious man."

Reverence is the hub around which Mary Oliver's poems revolve: "Of Course! the path to heaven/ doesn't lie down in flat miles./ It's in the imagination/ with which you perceive/ this world,/ and the gestures/ with which you honor it."

So perhaps if reason, for most of us, would fall short in our approach to God, we might try a different route. The imagination that Oliver speaks of in her poem is a separate entity, one that embraces irrationality and emotion--love. God is love is what we are told in nearly every religion. Love! an irrational entity, one that science does not condone, but love and its irrationality is a viable means, an alternative approach. Here is a beautifully irrational poem by Rainer Maria Rilke from The Book of Hours:

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

We can't reach out across the world, nor can we live a thousand years.  But something in us leaps up when reading mystical poetry like this and shouts yes. Yes, that's soul, the rationale-defying part of self. And soul yearns for God, always circling and circling. That act of yearning is sacred and beautiful, like a song, and sometimes massive and overwhelming, like a storm.

Yearning is a prominent theme in The Book of Hours. According to the book's introduction, Rilke wrote the poems in the "persona of a Russian monk living in a cloister, summoned by the bell to the task of seeing and meeting what was most real to him in the world."  Rilke had set out to find "the authentic ground to the superstructures of his culture's faith" and in this way established his own belief system and "loved God into being."

Here is another poem that addresses yearning from The Book of Hours:

Why am I reaching again for the brushes?
When I paint your portrait, God,
nothing happens.

But I can choose to feel you.

At my senses' horizon
you appear hesitantly,
like scattered islands.

Yet standing here, peering out,
I'm all the time seen by you.

The choruses of angels use up all of heaven.
There's no more room for you
in all that glory.  You're living
in your very last house.

All creation holds its breath, listening within me,
because, to hear you, I keep silent.


I love the lines "at my senses' horizon/ you appear hesitantly/ like scattered islands." Did Rilke recognize a timidity in God?  It would make sense that God would respect our finite minds, our limitations, our fearfulness. In the poem "Jesus on the Lean Donkey," Rumi writes that "God's silence is necessary, because of humankind's faintheartedness." Annie Dillard touches upon this as well in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a book where she stalks the divine in the natural world. She quotes the Old Testament and how Moses asked to see the face of God and God tells him "shall no man see me and live." But God allowed Moses to see his back parts and Moses returned to his people with his face aglow and they feared him. "Just a glimpse, Moses," Dillard writes, "A clift in the rock here, a mountaintop there, and the rest is denial and longing." Part of the reverence and respect for God is admitting that he is elusive and that we long for him. I wrote my own poem on this topic most recently:

There may be openings,
though I spend my life
banging at the door
there may be openings
at my head perhaps
or in the floor.
You subtle good rising
tucked away in some bud
some stone, some afterthought
you dangle, you plunge
you live your life
underneath my tongue;

a thirsted, distant entity
yet intimate
lies within me
a hatchling crying out
to sustenance
to embrace and dance,
to chance, chance, chance.

Flip a coin of mood and
I am staring at you darkly
and you don't move an inch
I cup your riddle
in my hands and sit, investigate
meditate
wait
for a petal to release
for a scent, some sound

but what I don't know
unfolds behind me,
around me, blossoming,
harkening
in petals and sounds abound.


We search, we research, we pray, we feel nowhere with God. We are trapped within the fabrications, limitations of our own minds, as Rilke tells us. Then one morning a dove sits on the sideview mirror of your car when you are frazzled, confused, and wracked with anxiety. It's a very strange place for a dove to be. And so is the railing outside of your therapist's office when you are feeling so torn up inside, over something you can't quite define, and the dove seems to say, "Peace to you." You ask the therapist, "Does a dove normally come to sit on the railing?" And she replies no. A soft, cream colored mourning dove that embodies calm and wildness and freedom. And there it is, a small, simple offering. This is our glimpse.

In this last poem, Rilke talks of finding God in darkness.  This is most ironic because we have always associated God with "the light":

You, darkness, of whom I am born-

I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations - just as they are.

It lets me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.

I believe in the night.


It is a subtle, subtle slip into consciousness, that hunch of " a great presence stirring."  But it counts.  It's not something you can calculate but that doesn't mean it isn't true. We yearn for God like we hunger for food, and we know food exists. We yearn for God like we yearn for touch, and we know touching is possible. Our yearnings do mean something; they count, but that doesn't mean they can be written as equations. The only formula that comes close to this is the Universal Law of Gravitation or "Every mass in the universe attracts every other mass." We could easily replace the word "attracts" with the phrase "seeks." One could correlate this to love and togetherness, or to seeking in general. To seek is the action part of yearning."You have to stalk everything," Dillard says. "Everything scatters and gathers; everything comes and goes like fish under a bridge...I am both waiting becalmed in a clift of the rock and banging with all my will, calling like a child beating on a door: come out!...I know you're there."

I champion Stephen Hawking's brilliant mind, but I think he's on the wrong track with pigeon-holing God to a theory.  God is an offering, a supreme rationality and irrationality; God is the poem, the hunch, the dove, the primordial tower. The black hole our minds must learn to accept.

Compartmentalizing Richard Parker

It's 6:30 am.  I woke up at exactly 1 am and 4 am, just as I do every night.  The comforter is tumbled to my side of the bed because of all my fumbling.  Outside is a golden haze.  I was just dreaming of walking a friend to Salem.  She was pushing a baby doll in a carriage.  My mother was ahead of us, pushing her own baby doll.  We were headed to the ocean where there were large rocks and teal colored waves.  It was a beautiful inlet, but there was rumor of a storm coming.

When I wake up at exactly 1 am, I am stricken with panic.  I go downstairs and make myself a warm cup of milk, take a half of pill and head back upstairs to bed.  I fall asleep, only to wake up at 4 am.  This time I eat a piece of bread and take another half of pill.  I obsess about my blood sugar at this point, because I am convinced that it is somehow wired to my anxiety and when it is low, I shoot awake.  This half-insomnia is causing me a great deal of stress and is virtually usurping my waking life too.  I am have no appetite and get pleasure from nothing.

I feel as if my anxiety is Richard Parker, the tiger in The Life of Pi hogging the life boat and I am the Indian boy hanging on to the flimsy make-shift raft.  I feed Richard Parker because I know the relationship between blood sugar and anxiety.  But its become a chore, always making sure he's fed.

The doctor says stress is causing this madness.  I suppose that is true.  But something chemical feels involved, as if, perhaps I am going through some sort of postpartum depression (albeit a little late).  Or it could be that I have let go of the dream, my dream of being a published, well-respected writer and I am, well, adrift.  Or it could be that I am so freakin' bored, I am making up my own dramas.

When I decided to write this blog, I opted for honesty.  I know there have been quite a few posts on fear and well, that's what's real for me now.  (I am slightly embarrassed by it, as if I should have it more together).  I am hoping others will share their stories of anxiety so that I will feel less alone.  Because I tell you one thing, in the middle of the night, when I've got Richard Parker breathing down my neck and I'm looking into his mesmerizing eyes, I feel very alone.

I suppose one must practice having balls in a situation like this.  So here it goes:  Listen Richard Parker, move the fuck over.  I'm the captain of this boat.  You need to get below deck, descend to the depths of my subconscious and romp around with the rest of the animals down there.  This place of consciousness is my domain, goddamnit. 

Waves, Bears, and the Tar-like Man-eating Ooze

My father sits in a room inside me, quietly.  He is there with his head slightly bowed and he is waiting patiently; I know not what for.  His presence is soothing to me and sometimes, in meditation, I press myself up against the door of his room and hear him breathing.

Sometimes the sun sends a white light through the trees and hits me right between the eyes.  I feel holy then, and found.

Last night I dreamed of waves, forty footers, curling over and welling up.  I saw them through a picture window of a living room in a house I did not own.  Also, there was a bear at the front door.  When I opened the door to secure the lock, the bear had left his skin.  The waves soaked the fur, sloshed it from side to side.  I shut the door.

In my imagination, there is God, there is my father, there are books and poems and there is also the Great Fear.  The Great Fear is formless.  The Great Fear reminds me of the tar-like man-eating black ooze from a horror movie I watched when I was about nine years old.  My grandparents had it on while they were babysitting my brother, sister and me.  (Not exactly a movie children should be watching before bed).  That night, we slept in the basement, of all places, and I remember staring anxiously at plastic flowers in a vase on a shelf but seeing the tar-like man-eating black ooze seep like magma into an island hut; it filled a bird cage and engulfed a parrot, ate the flesh and spit out the bones.  This is how the Great Fear can affect me- it can eat through every hopeful thought I have and spit out its bones.

The Great Fear is the first cousin of existential angst.  It is the second cousin of stress, and the third cousin of ego.  It is the waves crashing outside the window and the bear knocking at the door.  If I say the Great Fear is a part of my imagination, then where does that leave my father and his room?  Is he only my imagination as well?  I can't seem to let go of one without letting go of the other.  And what about God, did I invent him too? 

Or could it be that the imagination is a medium, just as water or air are mediums for sound and light.  My imagination could be a medium for the other worldly.  It's wired to the soul part of me. 

But fear, who drives that?  I drive fear and I know it.  It is my imagination on overdrive, a creative response to stress; it is also the byproduct of sensitivity.  I need to demote the Great Fear to just fear.  Little ol' everyday fear that is a very human thing and not something that is going to one day hunt me down and kill me, or force me to become an agoraphobic. 

Ha!  Easier said than done.

Leaping into the Irrational, Part I: Living Rightly, Thinking Wrongly

When I am tired and my mind has been beaten down by skull-crushing drudgery, faith feels impossible.  I back myself into mental corners and I do this by using reason.  But reason isn't necessarily the vehicle to peace of mind, nor is it a vehicle of faith.

I have just finished Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, a feat indeed while caring for twin babies.  I started reading it when they were infants, at night between feedings.  So nearly a year later, I have completed my journey with Tolstoy and his troop and it has been as satisfying as literature can be, when it is written by a master.  Years ago, I would have identified with the passionate, impetuous heroine, but now, my sympathy lies chiefly with Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin (a character based on Tolstoy himself).  Here's why: Levin struggles with his faith.

At the end of the novel, Levin is immersed in spiritual warfare and is "miserably divided against himself".  He experiences "fearful moments of horror".  Doubt is consistent, "growing weaker or stronger from time to time, but never leaving".  Levin was so near suicide, at times, that he "was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of shooting himself".

Now, Levin is an intelligent man, a landowner, a thinker.  He is compassionate and values the lives of the peasants living on his estate (the political goings-on between Russian gentry and peasant folk is a subplot in the novel).  As a thinker, he knows philosophy and science, "the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, evolution".  He knows theory's place and these are "very well for intellectual purposes".  It is daily life that has him stumped; how to live is the question.

Levin realizes that "reasoning had brought him to doubt".  When he acted, when he held himself to task and kept himself busy whether with the peasants or managing his household or keeping his bees, he was content.  It was the thinking that caused him to suffer.

Levin remembers how once, when he prayed, he felt holy.  He, an unbeliever.  This happened during his son's tumultuous birth.  At that moment he prostrated himself and prayed, he believed.  And yet, he could not extend that moment to "fit into the rest of his life".

He comes to a point when he can no longer tolerate his state of mind:

And he briefly went through, mentally, the whole course of his ideas during the last two years, the beginning of which was the clear confronting of death at the sight of his dear brother hopelessly ill.  

Then, for the first time, grasping that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing in store but suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life was impossible like that, and that he must either interpret life so that it would not present itself to him as the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself.


It is not until a conversation with a peasant by the name of Fyodor that he has his ah -ha moment.  They converse about two landowners, one "only thinks of filling his belly" but the other "lives for his soul".  And Levin, desperate for spiritual advice, latches onto the idea of living for the soul, but he doesn't know how to do it.

And then he realizes that he was "living rightly, but thinking wrongly".  He had been, by his belief system and moral character, already living for his soul by loving.  And loving thy neighbor is not a rational thing.  Reason tends to support survival of the fittest and the satisfaction of desires; it is the antithesis of love.  So Levin learned that you couldn't reach love by reason, you must reach it by action, which he was already doing.

I was captivated by the statement "living rightly, but thinking wrongly" because that is exactly what I do.  I do the arduous soulwork of mothering while thinking that I am useless because I do not bring in enough money, or have not yet reached a reputable status, or am too old to be a mother of such young children.  Thinking wrongly is using reasoning to squash one's spirit.  Here are some other more prominent examples:

• Science tells us the Big Bang and Evolution may very well be the reasons for existence.  There is no God, therefore ultimately I am uncared for and left to my own meager devices.  I will suffer, die and be nothing.

• Life is an intricate network of processes that can be shut down like a computer; once it is over, it is over.  The afterlife is the invention of fear and religion is the opium of the masses.

• I am lonely, unloved, and uncared for because of <insert anecdotal evidence>. 

These are examples of reasoning, a process by which statements are made and then backed up by either fact, theory, statistical or anecdotal evidence.  Reasoning is ordinarily a useful skill when it comes to certain scenarios, like choosing a car, for instance.  In other more philosophical, existential matters, it can sour pretty quickly.


Levin erupts into tears when he admits his belief in God.  He declares himself a changed man.  He supposes that the reality he knew before would now be different; that he would not feel hostile to or irritated by people.  But this isn't true.  Life continues to be life for Levin with all of its conflicts, disappointments, and hostilities.  He then reasons that his spiritual transformation was only a "mood".  But Levin knows intuitively that this is not the case.  Tolstoy compares life's vicissitudes and irritations to the bees that Levin cares for, how they "lasted only so long as he was among them" and "his spiritual peace was untouched within him".

I don't think I have yet experienced the profound realization regarding the existence of God that Levin experienced; I think these are reserved for non-believers and although I've had my moments of doubt and darkness, I don't believe I have ever fit the label of non-believer.  What I have realized, however, is that leaping into the irrational, be it through poetry, or prayer, or practicing loving kindness,  or just "loving thy neighbor" helps control or realign thinking wrongfully.  

The problem now is to remember this.


 
 

The Holy Geyser

I'm a Dickinson, but I am not only a Dickinson.  I am a Catholic, but I am not only a Catholic.  So now I am going to contradict myself.  I recently "returned" to the Catholic church because I wanted to baptize the babies.  I believe, now that I have a family, that this family needs religious structure.  I may have my private Emily Dickinson side, but there must be a vehicle to teach morals and conscience; kids won't understand an abstract spirituality.  They need stories.  So as I have been tooting on about private spirituality in this blog, I have secretly gone back to mass, for their sake.  I have debated whether the Catholic Church is the right choice and have reasoned this: as you get older and the world gets colder and stranger, familiarity becomes paramount.  Sure the Catholic church is frustrating in its patriarchal baloney; its hypocrisy regarding the sex scandals.  But we are all fallible here, on this planet, including the almighty church.  So I go to mass when I'm not doing my Emily Dickinson routine and I sit and stand and kneel and weep.  I don't know where the weeping is coming from; I suppose it has to do with the dead, or my palpable loneliness, or my desperation for something greater than myself.  The weeping is a warm gush of spirit that wants to burst out the top of my head like a holy geyser.  I want to contain it.  I don't want people to see me as I walk up to communion while they sing "One Bread, One Body".  I bite the inside of my cheek to stop it.  I look around and wonder if others have the holy geyser ready to burst through their heads; it doesn't seem so.  But then again, what do I know?  I'm not in their heads.  By the time I get to the priest and the host is raised up to my third eye, I have contained it and I am calm.  I go back to my seat and kneel and bow my head, try to look like everyone else.

Piers Morgan had Martin Sheen on his show to discuss the new pope and other Catholic issues.  Sheen had talked about how he had fallen away from the church in his twenties, but returned many years later after a trip to India.  He said he was awestruck at the poverty there.  He said he returned to the church because it was a commendable vehicle in caring for the poor.  That struck me, his saying that.  Because in this private spirituality of mine, there is no service.  I could put it in place, but it is infinitely more difficult than jumping on an already established bandwagon.  So I hope I come to know service and act, when the time is right, and I hope the church will help me do that.  And maybe this geyser of mine will be less likely to take my head off.

Honoring Your Inner Emily D.

My mother and I went to vespers at an Anglican Church last Sunday.  I had not eaten dinner yet and had a full day of errands and taking care of the kids beforehand.  I went because I felt I should for it was lent.  There was a small gathering of people in the church and there was a band singing songs.  I say band, but that somehow implies electric guitars or marching drums.  Really there were a few singers, an acoustic guitar player and a piano player and they were singing about God.  It was lovely, really.  There were people in the pews getting into it, raising up their hands and closing their eyes.  I was impressed by the music, but the people with the raised hands intimidated me.  Later, my mother told me, "that's how the spirit affects people", and I believe this to be true, but at the time, I was almost annoyed, as if they were putting on a show.  After the singing there was a Bible reading; it proceeded like a Bible study really, with the priest asking the audience questions.  We talked about how the devil took Christ up to a high place and showed him the cities of the world, telling him it could all be his if he would just get down on his knees and bow before him.  The priest asked us if we believed the devil was the ruler of the world and my mother raised her hand and said yes.  The priest asked her, "Why do you believe this?" and my mother said, "Just look at the world."  And everyone in the church laughed and nodded their heads.  "By empirical evidence," the priest added, who was, by his diction, well-educated.  I knew my mother didn't know what empirical meant and I almost leaned over to tell her, but the whole thing embarrassed me, her causing attention to us, the two people who didn't attend that particular church regularly.  Also, I know my mother is angry at the world for her frustrations and grief and she needed a scapegoat, thus the devil.  There was satisfaction in her face when she said raised her hand and said yes.  The truth is, I felt like the devil because I was anxious to leave; I hadn't eaten and I was hungry.  Besides, churches tend to make me anxious and I get more anxious, it seems on an empty stomach.  But she didn't want to leave and I didn't want to inconvenience her or make a scene.  It's ridiculous, how much I care about what people think of me.

I went to that church because I was curious about it and heard that it was a tight knit community; that they were a spiritual group.  I am searching for a community and I had high hopes for this one.  But when they broke out the Bible, I shut down.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it is because I can't get myself to take it literally.  It is a text of stories; I write stories, I know how they can become altered through the fictional tendencies of the mind.  I don't believe God put a hand up to stop these fictional tendencies.  I do believe there are some worthy allegories and parables, but many have almost become tiresome.  I am learning that I feel closer to God just saying a few words in my mind, not making sense of an allegory.  I'd rather reach God through my imagination than dogma, as Emily Dickinson did.  I've been teaching Dickinson in my Comp II class and I've felt this kinship with her.  This poem, in particular, reached me.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – (236)

By Emily Dickinson

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I, just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I’m going, all along.

So I told this to a friend one day, this conclusion I had reached; I also told her I felt guilty about it.  There is that old Christian belief that the devil is the one keeping you from God.  But that wasn't the case here.  The devil isn't keeping me from God if I don't feel comfortable in a church.  It just means that church isn't for me.  My friend responded, "Yes.  You have to feel entitled to your own life.  Not someone else's life."  And that made a lot of sense.  

Eradicating the Nameless Dread, i.e. Spread the Peanut Butter

My mind, my God.  This is the mantra from this morning.  Last night I awoke to a queer feeling of nameless dread, as if I were awaiting a sentence of some kind.  My self cleaved; the logical side fled and in came a throng of worries about my personal health, my state of mind, and the world in general.  I wanted to puke.  I surmised the causes; perhaps it was that late evening cookie that packed a sugar power punch and fueled the panic.  Perhaps it was a day of non-stop to do.  What if something is wrong with my blood?  What if I am depressed?  What if the panic cannot be stopped?  What if I am having a nervous breakdown?  What if I can't sleep?  How am I to function and be a mother to my kids?  Do I have an ulcer?  What if I am like the shark who sees its stomach floating on the outside of itself and continuously eats it to put it back in place but to no avail, it pops right back out each time?  

My logical mind taps me on the shoulder.  You need to protect yourself.  You've got to stop taking everything to heart because your heart is over-stuffed.  The killing and raping of children, the torturing of animals, cancer-stricken friends, environmental cataclysms (did you hear about the sink hole in Florida that swallowed a man whole?), celebrity suicides.  What is the cause of this nameless dread, is it internal or external?  It is all of these things.  It is none of these things.

I took a pill.  It's a small, white pill, very friendly-looking.  I waited as the light brightened the windows, for it to dispel the onslaught of rapacious thoughts.  I relaxed.  I panicked.  I relaxed.  I panicked.  I got up, when downstairs and ate a carrot.  When I came back up, I peered inside at the twins and saw my little daughter sitting up in her crib.  I longed to hold her, so I went in.  She smiled and spoke jibberish.  Then I held her to me and breathed in her skin.  I felt love, the love she had for me and I calmed.  I put her back in her crib and went to sleep.

My therapist:  I think it was Kirkegaard who said you could sit around all day stricken with anxiety of what could happen to you, so you must protect yourself.  Smooth over this life.  It's the peanut butter theory.

Me:  When I panic and am anxious, I forget the peanut butter.

My therapist:  Open the cabinet and look at the jars!