What We Talk About When We Talk About God (15 page)

RESOURCES, NODS, NOTES, AND A FEW SHOUT-OUTS

The Title

. . . is a nod to the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's memoir,
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,
which is
his
nod to a Raymond Carver short story collection,
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love
.

 

Hum

The
familiar/unfamiliar
line echoes Dallas Willard, who begins his masterful book
The Divine Conspiracy
talking about Jesus and how “presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity, unfamiliarity has led to contempt, and contempt has led to profound ignorance.”

The story about Jacob waking up is from Genesis 28.

The Helmut Thielicke quote is from
The Trouble with the Church
.

For a spot-on analysis of the God problem, see Andrew Sullivan's stunning essay at www.thedailybeast./newsweek/2012/04/01andrew-sullivan-christianity-in-crisis.html.

God never existed in the first place.
In regard to the question “Does God exist?” Huston Smith makes a helpful distinction between
absence of evidence
and
evidence of absence
in
The Soul of Christianity
.

The quotes from Jane Fonda and her interviewer are from the June 2007 anniversary issue of
Rolling Stone
magazine.

Ground of our being
is a phrase from Paul Tillich.

If you are new to Banksy, I suggest first you read his book
Wall and Piece
and then see his film
Exit Through the Gift Shop
. You will never be the same again.

I'm aware that
withness
and
forness
aren't really words. Until now, of course.

 

Open

When it comes to the “those things don't happen” discussion, I suggest Yann Martel's book
The Life of Pi
.

I first talked about some of the ideas in this chapter in my 2007 live film
Everything Is Spiritual,
which you can find at robbell.com.

 

I. Welcome to the Red Shift

The word
universe
comes from two Latin words,
unus,
meaning
one,
and
versus,
meaning
to turn—
that is, “turned into one.”

If you're interested in learning more about the universe but you want to read only one book, I suggest Bill Bryson's
A Short History of Nearly Everything
. He manages to make a staggering amount of information endlessly fascinating, which is an extraordinary gift, to say the least, and one that inspired me in the writing of this book, and especially this chapter.

13.7 billion years
. It never ceases to entertain me how this number is often stated with such conviction and precision. Not 13.6 or 13.8, but 13.7. What do those equations look like? how big is that chalkboard? (or whiteboard or computer program or whatever . . .)

Jump off the roof of your house
. Often when I'm writing I'll need an example of something and I'll type the first thing that comes to mind and then later go back and read what I wrote and think to myself, “What? Jump off the roof of your house? Who uses examples like that?” or maybe the better question is “Who jumps off the roof of his house?” the answer is me. I have, on a number of occasions.

Fit in a teaspoon
. For more, see io9.com. “What would a teaspoonful of neutron star do to you?”

Black holes, dark matter, and dark energy
. See Earthsky.org for a large-scale map of dark matter (January 9, 2012, entry; type “large-scale map” in search box).

“Dancing on the Ceiling”?
I have no idea why I picked that song. Discussion question for you and your friends: What is the single most overplayed song from the eighties? “Living on a Prayer”? “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”? Do I hear a “Walking in Memphis”?

No things, no time
. For more on the relationship between space and time and how it affects the way we understand work and rest, I highly recommend Abraham Joshua Heschel's book
Sabbath
.

Its consistency a persistent illusion
is a line from Einstein.

Bendy, curvy, relative.
For a mind-bending look at all that curviness, see Leonard Shlain's
Art and Physics.

Just for kicks, go to answers.com and ask, “how much energy does the sun give off?”

My favorite line from Einstein? “I have a few splendid ideas which now only need incubation.”

 

II. Who Ordered That?

Clearly I'm not a scientist—let alone a quantum or theoretical physicist—so what you find here in this section of the book comes from my having read lots of books by lots of really, really brilliant people. Here are a few I'm most indebted to, both for their insight and their intelligence and, more important, for their ability to make it all accessible to an average chap like me:

Paul Davies for his book
God and the New Physics
(especially his insights into energy, time, and consciousness)

Lisa Randall for her book
Knocking on Heaven's Door
(which includes a fascinating description of the large Hadron Collider in chapter 8)

Leon M. Lederman and Christopher T. Hill for their book
Quantum Physics for Poets
(in which they talk about display windows and toasters, among other things)

Fred A. Wolf for his book
Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists

Several fascinating Youtube clips along these lines:

• Quantum levitation demonstration at the North Museum (Lancaster, PA)

• Russell Brand interviewing a quantum physicist

Grappling with something bigger
is from an article on the Higgs Boson in
TIME
magazine, July 23, 2012.

22 quintillion.
From Dr. Peter Wittich, Cornell Center for Materials Research (see mr.cornell.edu-ask a scientist!)

Toaster should glow blue.
this is called the Ultraviolet Catastrophe.

 

III. You Dirty Star, You

Crowned with glory and honor
is from Psalm 8.

A great book about being human:
Made for Goodness
by Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu.

A great quote about being human: St. John of Kronstadt said, “Never confuse the person, formed in the image of God, with the evil that is in him, because evil is but a chance misfortune, illness, a devilish reverie. The very essence of the person is the image of God, and this remains in him despite every disfigurement.”

A great book about the sacred nature of the human body:
Echo of the Soul
by J. Philip Newell.

For more on hierarchy, see Ken Wilber's
A Brief History of Everything,
particularly the first part on nested holons.

For more on what you do with the energies you've been given, see Ronald Rolheiser's fantastic book
The Holy Longing
. The first chapter alone, about Mother Teresa, Princess Diana, and Janis Joplin, will be worth it.

For more on unfolding consciousness across history, see Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's
Activation of Energy
.

 

IV. The Sea We're Swimming In

Two excellent books on the spiritual implications of quantum theory:

Quantum Leap: How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion
by Dean Nelson and Karl Giberson

Quantum Theology
by Diarmuid O'Murchu

One extraordinary book on science and the human spirit:

Einstein's God
by Krista Tippett

One brilliant book by a brilliant scientist:

The Language of God
by Francis Collins

Principia'
s original title was
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
.

It's fun to speculate
is from
Surfer
magazine, April 2012, p. 38.

 

Both

RQ8F7
double-edged Incisotron.
obviously I totally made that up. But wouldn't you love to have one?

I'm not a businessman
is from a remix of “Diamonds Are Forever” by Kanye West.

Because it's there
is from “Climbing Mount Everest Is Work for Supermen” interview,
New York Times,
March 18, 1923.

Where God just was
is from Exodus 33.

Saw no form of any kind
is from Deuteronomy 4.

Who dwells in unapproachable light
is from 1 Timothy. The word
unapproachable
is the word
aprositos
in the original greek—from
a
meaning
not,
pros
meaning
to,
and
eimi
meaning
to go
—that is, “can't go to.”

Spirit is like the wind
is spoken by Jesus in John 3.

On plows and hoes, Ken Wilber does a fascinating bit in his
A Brief History of Everything
.

Can a mother forget . . . ?
is from Isaiah 49.

On a side note, in the Genesis poem that begins the Bible, it's written that we are created male and female, “in the image of god.” this is important to remember when you encounter churches and religious communities that are run by men and men only, where men do the speaking and leading and decision making. When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god. Interesting to note that in the Catholic Church, with its all-male leadership, Mother Mary plays such a prominent role. Another example of how the sacred feminine can't be denied; she will express herself
somehow
. She moves, after all, in mysterious ways. (Cue U2 song.)

For more on paradox, see Parker Palmer's classic book
The Promise of Paradox
.

For more on faith and doubt, see Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld's
In Praise of Doubt
.

Like a tree
is a nod to Psalm 1.

Pete's quote comes from
How (Not) to Speak of God
by Peter Rollins.

 

With

For more on the God who is somewhere else, read John Robinson, who writes insightfully about this in
Honest to God
.

I'm indebted to a number of greater writers for their words about seeing. If you want to read more, I recommend:

Everywhere Present
by Stephen Freeman

God Hides in Plain Sight
by Dean Nelson

An Altar in the World
by Barbara Brown Taylor

and of course the classic

The Practice of the Presence of God
by Brother Lawrence

Massive wall of pink and yellow.
the installation is by Peter Wegner and it's called
Guillotine of Sunlight, Guillotine of Shade.
It contains 1.4 million sheets of paper in 40 different colors. For more about Peter Wegner's work, go to petewegner.com.

Ruach
occurs over 380 times in the Hebrew Bible.

I can't say enough about Jürgen Moltmann's incredible book
The Spirit of Life,
which has been a huge inspiration to me and helped shape my thinking about
ruach
.

The whole Earth is God's.
Psalm 24.

God renews the face of the Earth.
Psalm 104.

On the breadth and power of
ruach
energy, see Psalm 33.

As long as I have life
is from Job 27.

The writer in Ecclesiastes uses these words: “and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the
ruach
returns to god who gave it” (12:7).

On
ruach
garnishing the heavens, see Job 26.

On
ruach
bringing things into existence, see Psalm 104.

Where can I go?
is from Psalm 139.

Kavod
. The root is K-B-D, and it also means
liver
or
interior
or
soul
or
be important
as well as
heavy
. Hebrew words are quite limber like that. I used it here in a positive sense of something that matters, but much of its use in the scriptures when it's translated
heavy
is negative, as in
oppressive
or
severe
or
a burden
. When it's used positively, it's usually as
glory,
as in 1 Chronicles 16, where David says, “Declare God's glory . . .”

Everything is ultimately connected to everything else.
For a stunning example of how everything is connected, see
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in which Wilkinson and Pickett show statistically how the wider the gap between the rich and the poor in a country, the worse off the
rich
are.

The
L
ORD
is one
is from the Shema prayer, found in Deuteronomy 6.

Deep calls to deep
is from Psalm 42.

Subsurface unity
is a line from a commencement speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon College, Ohio, in 2005.

Telos
is found forty times in the new testament.

The Office.
It's been fascinating to see the original British series and the arc as it unfolded over two seasons, in contrast with the American version, which in many ways goes the opposite direction.