Omni omni

Pastor: God is omni...
All: Everything!
Pastor: We are omni...
All: Nothing.

This was the chant of the people in the church that I attended on Christmas Eve in Berwyn, IL. It was not something I liked, as you may have guessed from my general dislike of omni's. In my opinion, this pastor may have just said that God is omni omni (all all), and have admitted that he was just trying to worship 'a bigger God than anyone else'. This also seems to be moving away from traditional orthodoxy, which isn't too surprising given the neglect of proper historic scholarship and teaching in the evangelical church in the US. At least, the attempt to find out how it was, rather than just trying to prove that what the church holds to now has always been held in the same way. Their view of their own theology, much like Plato's god, is an unmoved mover.

As a sidenote, I think that claiming that God is omni omni could also be linked to pantheism, but I'm sure that wasn't the (conscious) intention of that pastor.

However, there are a couple of omni's that I may like. One for God, one for us. They arise from my reading in quantum physics and cosmology respectively. Looking at the small to see the big, and the big to see the small.

First, God's omni: Omnipresent.
Cup your hands, and imagine what you are holding. Not a vacuum. Instead, there are trillions upon trillions of atoms. Remove these. Vacuum? Not yet. There's trillions of tiny 'particles' like neutrinos and invisible photons (from many sources, including the background radiation of the universe itself). Remove these. Vacuum? Almost. However, "careful investigation of this vacuum reveals the strange appearance of elementary particles in this emptiness. Even where there are no atoms, and no elementary particles, and no protons, and no photons, suddenly elementary particles will emerge. The particles simply foam into existence."
"Particles emerge from the 'vacuum'. They do not sneak in from some hiding place when we are not looking. Nor are they bits of light energy that have transformed into protons. These elementary particles crop up out of the vacuum itself - that is the simply and awesome discovery. I am asking you to contemplate a universe where, somehow, being itself arises out of a field of 'fecund emptiness'... This radical emergence takes place throughout the entire universe... The ground of the universe then is an empty fullness, a fecund nothingness." (Brian Swimme, The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos)
This fecundity, creativity, abundance, giftedness, this is God. This is how I can imagine God being omnipresent - even in the void, God is there. At the darkest depths, and the wildest places, God is bubbling forth, an over-abundance.

Now our omni: Omnicentric.
This one is too complicated for me to explain here fully. This one emerges out of Hubble's discovery of the motion of the galaxies. If we start at the earth, and move bigger in scale, we get the Solar System, the Milky Way galaxy, the Local Group (of galaxies), the Virgo Supercluster, the universe. The discovery that Hubble made is that all the other superclusters are moving away from our own, the further the faster. This puts us at the centre of the universe However, because of the theories of relativity (thanks to Einstein), it turns out that wherever you are in the universe, you are at the centre.
"For we have discovered an omnicentric evolutionary universe, a developing reality which from the beginning is centered upon itself at each place of its existence. In this universe of ours to be in existence is to be at the cosmic centre of the complexifying whole.
"If there are Hubble-like beings in the Hercules Cluster of galaxies, seven hundred million light-years away, and such creatures are pondering the universe from that perspective, they will also discover that the galaxies in the universe are moving away from them. They will thus conclude on the basis of this evidence that they are at the centre of the universe's expansion, and they will be correct." (Swimme)

What an incredible universe!


As an additional note, I prefer to use the words 'the universe' instead of 'God'. Not as an inert space where things happen, but as the active gifting and promise of all, of redemption. Universe. Uni-verse. One verse. One song. How beautiful! (See Tolkien's creation story in the Silmarillion for an incredible myth of creation-song)

Feast of the Bear

Here's a few pictures from Feast of the Bear, the annual SCA event held at Casa Loma each November. First, Grum & I in garb. He's Norse. I'm meant to be, but haven't got appropriate garb yet.
And here's Darci & I at the feast in the evening. You can probably tell from the cider (what a cool tankard!) and the smile on my face that I'm pretty merry at this point.

The Poison of Gift Cards

Americans annually spend close to $50 billion on gift cards. During the 'holiday' season alone, they are likely to spend around $20 billion. Similar nations have comparable statistics. Last year, $1 billion of gift cards were never redeemed. That means the American people charitably donate $1 billion to its largest corporations - to those who seek to entrap us in consumerism. To the worship of Mammon that our culture is so driven to.

Not only that, gift cards are effectively an interest-free loan for these corporations. They're earning large amounts of interest off that little plastic card. They're also encouraging people to go out and shop more, encouraging consumerism, and forcing people to buy things they don't really need. Really, don't we all already have enough of those things?

If you must give gifts (because I'm sure none of your friends really need them), and if you don't have the creativity to make a gift, at least have the imagination to buy a real gift for them. Show your friends that you've thought about them and have taken the risk to buy something for them that they may or may not like.

Suffice it to say, I will not be accepting any gift cards from people this year. If you give me one, I will return it. Not because I'm ungrateful, but because I refuse to participate in your worship of Mammon. Enough children have already been sacrificed.

Read more: "The best insult money can buy"

Ev(il?)angelism

I could never evangelise. Growing up I decided it couldn't be my spiritual gift, at fundamentalist Bible college (where I was 'forced' to do it for two semesters) I could never bring myself to do so, and today I would consider myself to be wasting my life and maybe even doing wrong if I were to try to convert someone to my religion (or at least to my belief system).

However, I've come to realise that I am evangelising. No, I'm not trying to convince anyone to become a Christian-Pagan, or to subscribe to a particular belief system. Instead, I'm trying to win people over to a 'me-like' way of looking at the world, -- ecological mindedness, concern for the poor and for justice, and being politically conscious and active. This realisation has come about mainly because of an email conversation I've been having for a few years with one of my Moody friends (Maureen).

However, I think that here I have failed: in one of her recent email conversations she wrote, "You're entitled to your opinion, and I'd rather not get drawn into a serious debate, especially when the opinions on either side are not going to change anytime soon." i.e. "I don't want to talk about this because I'm not going to change (and neither are you)."

Like the annoying street preacher who is constantly promising hell (see Bright Eyes, video), am I being offensive? Should I also be set fire to, because I'm doing that which my culture despises? Or is this kind of evangelism OK? Or even 'right'? I obviously think it's right because I'm doing it. Maybe I'll stop in Maureen's case, but that certainly doesn't mean I'll stop everywhere. I can't remain silent. Am I not called to speak for justice, to cry out for those who are given no voice?

Is this still evangelism? Should I stop despising those who yell 'hell' at me because I am guilty of the same evil? Am I trying to convert people to a religion of 'eco-political-justice thinking', which is just the same as trying to convert people to 'naïve-world-destroying fundamentalism'? Or is my evangelism different? Is it still-wrong-but-forgivable? Or is it what I should be doing, what I am called to do?

Becoming Evil

It seems so much theologising today is about escaping ontology. The world (in Western civilisation) has for so long been seen as a concrete, set thing, the 'way it is', or a creational structure. Now, theology is trying to escape these attempts, because we've discovered it doesn't work (or that we don't like where it leads). Theology now is concerned with be(com)ing. But as we build up this new way of thinking, talking, perceiving, we keep finding there are parts of our theory that are left as ontology.

Process theology has allowed the universe to be in a state of becoming, along with God. I've not yet found a theory of the trinity that is in a state of becoming, so that may be a future project (for someone else?). But this post is triggered by reading Jürgen Moltmann and somewhat Barry Allen (the philosopher, not the superhero).

Moltmann ontologises evil. He puts is there at the 'start', as an original part of the cosmos (almost prior to creation itself!) So my attempt now will be trying to put evil in a state of becoming.

There are many types of evil in the world, many manifestations of it. Before technological civilisation, there were less manifestations. Before humans, with their artifacts, there were less still. Before animal consciousness, there were less again. Manifestations of evil, by how I'm describing them, are to do with failing to respond to our calling, with the shirking of responsibility, with the exploitation of something that should not be exploited.

For example, it was only possible for a human to kill 100 people in a minute once explosives or machine guns were invented. It has only become possible to wipe out life on earth since the nuclear bomb. It has only become possible in the last few years to make money on such a large scale from videoing the rape of girls (through the internet). It is not yet possible (as far as I know) for humans to create a temporary black hole on the surface of the planet to completely annihilate an enemy (or whatever).

"With great power comes great responsibility." With only a little power, there's only a little. I can't be too angry at a rock in my front garden for the war in Iraq (at least, it would be unjust if I were). So, taking a somewhat big-bang-type theory, I can say that there was only a little responsibility that those initial photons were called to (I believe God's call is for all of creation). Therefore, there were not many, or at least not big, manifestations of evil. Those have increased with increased complexity.

The universe is learning what it does not like. In a similar way that humans find things they do not like (slavery, murder, rape, etc.), the universe is discovering those things too. Moving towards an eschatology, the new creation will be when the universe has got rid of those things.

Of course, there are problems with this, and I can think of a few immediately.
1) Does the universe need to discover every kind of evil before the new creation? As if there's a finite list? Because I don't want to make evil infinite, but I think I might be.
2) Have I just ontologised vulnerability, by making this the initial origin, the starting point for the universe?
3) Have I equated 'Evil' with 'Manifestations of Evil', and can this be done?

That'll do for now. Thanks for reading, I know it was rather long.

Existence!

Google has found me! It's proven: The plaosmos exists!

De-finite-ions

Just a quick post about some ideas I've been playing with (coming from my IDS class). Presented as quotable quotes - the first is the basis for the second and third.

"The problem with trying to define something is that what you are trying to define is constantly changing, and so is not finite. Describe instead. And for God's sake, use poetry!"

"Artists will always try to escape any confining definition of art. So stop arguing over the question of what is art!"

"Any definition of what it is to be human will always exclude some, unless you use a circular definition: what is human is human."