A Universe to Explore

I just love this explanation … it just seems to open up space on so many levels!! I have never seen Christian escatology teaching in this way before. Simultaneously I never seen love relationships in this way either. All I can say is that its pretty damn cool. 

http://peterrollins.net/blog/

While John the Baptist preached that the kingdom was coming, Jesus preached that this kingdom was already among us. However, in saying this he did not overturn the message of John the Baptist but rather deepened it, for Jesus spoke of a kingdom that was here and yet as simultaneously being something that was looked to as still to come.

Following the image of the kingdom that was spoken of by Jesus, we encounter the idea that while it is still thought of as “to come” this does not mean that it will one day arrive at the end of a certain period of time, but rather that the kingdom is “to come,” i.e., the kingdom is already among us but in a manner that implies it is absent. ..This view of the kingdom is something that we also find confirmed in the writings of Paul, such as when he speaks of the kingdom as both the now and the not-yet.

Is this initially bizarre logic not what we also find being played out when we contemplate the presence of those whom we love? Is it not a great romantic truth that the presence of our beloved is always of a spectral kind? To truly know and love someone involves acknowledging that person’s inscrutable eschatological depths, understanding that the presence of the one before us is always manifested as a type of absence, as an opening. For each person is a universe for us to explore. In this way it is wrong to imagine that we long for someone we love to enter into our world, to come. Rather, when the one we love arrives in our world we encounter that person as precisely the one who is “to come.”

This is why our desire for those we love is born in our encounter with them rather than satisfied there. We cannot desire the one whom we do not know, for the simple reason that we do not know that person. We can only desire the one who is before us, the one who remains mysterious in his or her presence. The other is both the origin and the unreachable destination of our desire, for there is always something Other about the other, something “to come” amidst the presence of those we love. In the eyes of the beloved a universe opens up and envelops us.

The “God-particle” (&Turkish Kebab)

While I was coming to terms with the idea of digesting the biggest Turkish kebab in living history, in other parts of Europe Scientists were struggling to come to terms with the tiniest invisible particles - “the God-particle”.

A man by the name of Professor Peter Higgs almost 44 yrs ago came up with a theory that “there is an as yet undetected field which binds some of the basic particle of matter together aided by a mass-less substance nicknamed the Higgs boson” (Guardian- Severin Carrell) or what he refers to as the “God-particle”. People laughed at him then but now this dark star is getting his time to shine.

Astronomers apparently can account for 5% of observable matter in the universe – the stuff of stars and planets but then there is “dark matter” that makes up a further 25% leaving another 70% of “exotic dark energy, which drives the expansion of the universe”.  Quite a lot to digest on a stomach still expanding with Turkish kebab!! 

So the Large Hadron Collider is in search of this particle, this dark energy, ”a mysterious substance that stretches through the universe and clings around galaxies.”  I wish them luck. I have flashbacks to Christina’s talk which could have been titled  ”The Universe for Dummies”, with all our combined knowledge of the Scientific world. It was mind boggling but wonderful.

Well I thought my stomach was a black hole until I ate that Turkish kebab. Now I have evidence of those unmistakable particles of matter. I can hardly move!!  Perhaps the Scientists will have the same sort of discovery pretty soon….

Risky Business

Since arriving in London, my perception of the place has been coloured somewhat by John Caputo’s ”What would Jesus Deconstruct” (Thanks fakeexpressions for this gem!) He starts the book off speaking about the commecial success that’s been made with the “What Would Jesus Do?” slogan, reminding us that its origins are far from the American self satisfied gung-ho christianity that it seems to represent . The original text where Sheldon uses the phrase is ”In his Steps”. A heart-sick tramp in the story confronts a well-to-do church saying:

 “It seems to me there is an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn’t exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don’t understand. But what would Jesus do?” 

Caputo expands the idea further by saying later in the chapter, “ Were this figure of Jesus, who is the centrepiece of this poetics or theo-poetics, to return, what would he look like? An illegal immigrant? A child dying of Aids? A Vatican bereaucrat? And what do we imagine he would expect of us here and now? The questiion calls for a work of application, interpretation, interpolation, imagination and self interrogation and all that is risky business”  

I have wondered in the last few days that were Jesus a face in London, what would he look like? Its made me look at the people around me differently. One can’t help in this environment being slightly envious of the opinionated, overly confident city-slickers who hop on and off the tube in their latest fashion gear with their trendy cell phone, ipod and lap top computer. But whose body/guise would Jesus choose were he to come to London? Would it be the gypseys who walk around with their children asking for money, or the over-weight red head kid? Or maybe the Eastern European at the corner shop?

I am keenly aware that whatever Jesus would do, it would turn our expectations on their head and challenge us to the core .  Even as I approach the idea of working again (oh the reality must kick in too soon I fear) and finding a job, there is a sense of being in that amazing place of being able to redefine my direction. I could do a number of things. Motivation is always deadly apparent at times like this. Do I go for the big bucks or do I wait a bit and think where perhaps the face of Christ is most apparent? Challenging thoughts….and as Caputo says “risky business”.