Here’s Part Four (and the end) of friar Leopold’s ‘Cosmic Musings of a Franciscan Scientist.’ (If you missed any of this four-part series: Part One; Part Two; Part Three)
It more than just boggles the mind. Sometimes it seems to me dangerous to think of the universe itself, much less to think about the God which (Who?) is even greater than all that – Who made it all and sustains it all -Who is shot through it all and encompasses it all. As I say, again, it more than boggles the mind. It probably ought not be delved into too deeply for risk of catatonia.
Just one small consequence of this kind of thinking. Ah, but for that – more of our Judeo-Christian tradition. Our most ancient bit of religious faith, belief, truth, we find in the first reading every year at the Easter Vigil, chapter one of Genesis, the first of the creation stories in the Bible, the six-day creation story with God resting on the seventh day. At the end of each day of creation, God sees and says: “That’s good. That’s good. That’s really good.”
Our most ancient religious tradition is that all creation is good. Not as many of the ancient Hebrews’ pagan neighbors thought – that God made the universe from barfing or spitting or something more disgusting, and therefore it is disgusting, but our understanding is that, as a friend of mine has on a metalwork scroll in her kitchen window, “It’s all good!” So, as a consequence of that ancient understanding and all our modern science, the old scare tactics of saying things like “God sees you!”, or “God’ll get you!” is passe. God is as intimately a part of each of us, as well as outside us, that we are wrapped in the atmosphere of God’s presence at all times. Indeed, God sees, knows, and so comfortingly understands us and our deeds and our motivations even better than we understand ourselves.
We, each one of us, is a part of that creation that from the beginning God has called Good. We can let the eco-theologians and the eco-scientists get together and decide what we can do to protect and preserve this universe for the future. BUT some of what needs to be understood underlying all those protections is that underlying all of the universe are the laws of thermodynamics, and the Second Law says everything runs down.
From the instant of creation (Big Bang—theorized by Georges Lamaitre, SJ) when all the energy was concentrated in one “event” , “singularity”, to now, it has been running down, with the energy being distributed more and more randomly, and the thermal energy moving to a more and more equilibrium-condition (and will until what is called “The Heat Death of the Universe” (Teilhard de Chardin, SJ’s Omega Point?), and that stability is an illusion and change is the only constant (says Heraclitus and the Ephesian School of Philosophy from about five hundred years before the time of Jesus), and we are graced to play our role in this great roller coaster ride of creation and blessed to be who and what and where we are now.
Peace to all in your cosmic contemplation this season of creation (which is really forever)!
– friar Leopold Keffler OFM Conv.
