Troubled Monkey
(How does the world work? How do I fit? What really matters in life?)
Why am I writing this blog?
It’s a reasonable question and I’m not totally clear about the answer but I’ll tell you as much as I know myself.
I think the route of it is a need to express myself somehow. There’s a lot spinning round in my head (that’s just how I’m wired) and it feels like I just need to let some of it out. So from one point of view I’m blogging for me. At the back of my mind though, I have this feeling that I can’t be the only one that wrestles with these issues. Life gets flung at all of us and we all try to make some sort of sense out of it. Perhaps conversations are better than pondering in isolation, so I am throwing this out to anyone who cares to read.
My name is Daniel (for the purposes of this blog, I hope you will excuse me using pseudo names). I am a 46 year old man, married to Anne, with three children in their early teens, Charlotte, Bethany and Hal. If you’d like to know a little more about us there’s a potted family history on the ABOUT page, which will give you a thumbnail sketch of where I’m coming from. You will also find a DIARY section which I am writing mostly for my own piece of mind, which you are welcome to browse through at your own risk!
I think what I’m trying to do is to explore what life is all about and use that understanding to make real differences to the way I tackle the huge variety of experiences, good and bad, that life throws at us. Surely this is key to finding fulfilment in life, which is to me, the route to contentment and joy! Clearly I have to do this from my own context (which is an additional reason for including the diary), but I sense that many of my joys and frustrations will be common to others and feel that some kind dialogue my be more productive and less frustrating than an internal monologue.
If you care to read on . . .
Let me outline what you can expect from this bog if you care to read on – I would hate for you to waste you’re time. As I’ve said before, the point of this blog is to explore what life is all about.
As human beings, from are earliest days, are senses bombard our brain and we gradually build up a virtual model of reality in our heads that seems to match our experiences. For instance we learn about gravity as we let go of spoons in our high chain and as we try to walk. We learn about pain when we get our model of gravity wrong. Of course as we get older we learn to communicate and are taught by others.
We are taught by our parents, siblings, teachers, friends. I was brought up a Christian by my father who later lost his faith, so that coloured my understanding of creation. My mother is an atheist and really giving and loving. Science fascinates me and appears at odds with christianity on many levels. The tension between elements of the faith and science communities has thrown up many difficult questions about the true unseen nature of the universe. Once they tore me apart, but I love to contemplate; to build the best model of reality in my head that I can, from my perspective. Faith and science together, reunited like a estranged couple, is part of that picture for me.
But thinking is not enough! Life is not a theory lesson. Unless what we believe impacts on our decisions, our daily lives, how we treat others, it is so much hot air with no ballon.
So, what is my model of the universe like?
I’ve got lots of theories that are kind of coalescing into some thing of a coherent picture. Thinking about the nature of the universe for christians is thinking about what God has made observable about himself. I wouldn’t dare express some of my thoughts to some of my christian friends and there are other thoughts that many scientists would have little time for as well. However I do believe that there is a growing intersection of the two groups and this is dear to my heart.
Clearly, I like writing. So to kick thinks off I’d like to share with you one, simplistic way of looking at creation from a different perspective. I wrote this in the form of a children’s story;
The Gargantuan Ordinating Dehexemagalaton
Once there was a super, super computer – ‘The Gargantuan Ordinating Dehexemagalaton’, or the Big IT for short.
IT was so big and so clever that there was nothing that It didn’t know, nothing that It couldn’t work out. No sum too big, no question too hard. Nothing was to complicated for It.
And so It had a problem… It was BORED!
How could It spend It’s time, what was left to think about. What was there to discuss, and with who?
There was no one else. If you’re a super, super computer, what are you supposed to do for friends? That was a problem worth thinking about!
Then one day the Big IT had an idea. A really great idea. Perhaps the best idea It had had in a millions years!
It would make little robots. Lots and lots of them. They wouldn’t be as big and clever as the Big IT, but they would all be different and they’d be able to think and make choices for themselves.
It would make thousands of them.., millions.., billions, and still they would all be different. It would give them robot bodies, charge them up and send them out into the world, just to see what they made of it, and of each other.
Whilst they still had power, they would be buzzing around, building things and enjoying the worlds he’d given them. Talking to each other, making friends and helping each other. They would each have so many interesting things happen to them!
And, although there were billions of them, It would monitor them all – that would give It something to think about!
The Big IT would be there in the background to help them here and there. And, if they choose to tune in, It could help them all the more.
It wouldn’t be too loud, for It didn’t want to overpower them. They were to work things out for themselves and make there own choices. They must be themselves – that was the whole point.
But that wasn’t the best part of the plan.
The best part – the bit The Big IT really liked, was what to do with them when their batteries ran out.
It was not worried about the hardware – their robot bodies could rust away.
The part of them It cared about, the part that mattered was their thoughts.
They each would have a long and interesting story to tell. They would have learnt so much and become so much more than they were when It set them going.
So, before their power had almost drained to nothing It would ‘upload their character’ so that they could become part of the Big IT. Then It wouldn’t be so lonely and they would live happily all together.
It was a brilliant idea so It set about it right away.
It made some beautiful worlds for them, powered them up and set them all off.
It could have been lovely. They had everything they needed and each other, but things soon started to go wrong.
Giving them free will – that was the problem. They had to be free to be themselves or there would be no point.
But if they were free to be good they had to be free to be bad too. A lot were good and some very good. Others were very bad and they were messing up the Big IT’s worlds.
In the end It paid them a visit, in robot form, to put things straight, so it would be much easier for them to come back to the Big IT in the end. And though they caused It great pain the Big IT was willing to do that to bring It’s little robots back to be part of the itself – The Gargantuan Ordinating Dehexemagalaton.
I’d like also to share with you a lovely short story that beautifully portrays something profound about the life and death, here and here after. This I found on the back of a funeral service sheet that Anne went to for her friends brother.
The Dragonfly
Once, in a little pond, in the muddy water under the lily pads,
there lived a little water beetle in a community of water
beetles. They lived a simple and comfortable life in the pond
with few disturbances and interruptions.
Once in a while, sadness would come to the community when one of
their fellow beetles would climb the stem of a lily pad and
would never be seen again. They knew when this happened; their
friend was dead, gone forever.
Then, one day, one little water beetle felt an irresistible urge
to climb up that stem. However, he was determined that he would
not leave forever. He would come back and tell his friends what
he had found at the top.
When he reached the top and climbed out of the water onto the
surface of the lily pad, he was so tired, and the sun felt so
warm, that he decided he must take a nap. As he slept, his body
changed and when he woke up, he had turned into a beautiful
blue-tailed dragonfly with broad wings and a slender body
designed for flying.
So, fly he did! And, as he soared he saw the beauty of a whole
new world and a far superior way of life to what he had never
known existed.
Then he remembered his beetle friends and how, by now, they were thinking he was dead. He wanted to go back to tell them, and
explain to them that he was now more alive than he had ever been
before. His life had been fulfilled rather than ended.
But, his new body would not go down into the water. He could
not get back to tell his friends the good news. Then he
understood that their time would come, when they, too, would
know what he now knew. So, he raised his wings and flew off
into his joyous new life!
~Author Unknown~
What I really like about this is the concept of a next stage of life being part but also apart of the world we are aware of. We need a better concept of heaven. The angels with harps and a bearded Father God on a fluffy white cloud falls woefully short of reality.
It’s my belief that the universe is made up of the material, tangible, flesh and blood, rocks and earth world; and the etherial, intangible and yes, spiritual world all wrapped up together. We ourselves are flesh, blood and spirit blended together.
I also think that the universe is divided into parallel parts. This is not at odds with science. There is a theory that the smallest particles of the universe are strings (string theory), and beyond this that these ‘strings’ may be connected to form membranes called branes that are ‘crumpled up’ and form our universe (my apologies to those with a better understanding of this for a rather crude summery of something I can only touch the edge of).
I imagine the universe as being made up of two branes wrapped up together. One ‘material’ and one ‘etherial’. Being wrapped together so closely their natures combine (hence our material/spiritual make up – body and soul) and lend each other properties. Perhaps even, it is the collision or intersection of branes that initiates the big bang? I believe that this too is a mainstream scientific theory. It helps to explain why gravity is so weak I’m told.
Combining this with a christian view of the world is what works in my model of the universe. God mainly inhabits the etherial/spiritual brane, but causes this to intersect with the material brane to create our universe. We are restricted to the material brane in this life, just like the dragonfly larvae. But He has bridged the gap between them or even opened a gateway (or portal) through Christ, that allows our metamorphosis into a new form of life that can exist in the spiritual dimensions, or ‘breath air and fly in the case of the dragonfly!
Troubled Monkey 