Observations and Ideas Thinly Veiled as a Daily Journal

And how easy it is to celebrate the results without really understanding, or appreciating, what it takes to produce them.

It’s not necessarily malicious. Sometimes the people making decisions are simply too far removed from the work to see what they’re asking of those doing it.

That got me thinking about how things eventually come together.

Concrescence.

And once that word popped into my mind, well, it was all over.

Straight to Terence McKenna and the concrescence of the eschaton.

The idea that all of history is converging towards a single, transformative moment.

Turns out it wasn’t just clever imagining. McKenna had actually tried to put a date on it. His early Timewave calculations included his own twenty-fifth birthday, November 16, 1971, which came and went without incident. A disappointing test for the Timewave in its prototypal form.

The date was revised, eventually landing on December 21, 2012.

I said I did like the idea of the concrescence of the eschaton. It’s clever to imagine. But the idea itself, regardless, it’s a pretty slippery slope to start making Nostradamus-like predictions, because there’s a statistical chance you could get it right.

I don’t think the universe is designed in such a way that you can really make an accurate prediction, telling the future through some metaphysical advantageous insight.

Tea leaves, I Ching, crystal balls, palms.

I do believe you can see patterns, but not actual dates. To know that would be mathematically, astronomically unfathomable.

Even numerology and astrology, as much as I was seduced by them for a time in my life, the meaning I saw in those numbers generally faded when life kicks you in the nuts.

It was an exploration into the deeper meanings of things, which then led me into Christianity, and into psychology, and the understanding of history, and more recently the understanding of myself, and making sense of the various cultures that run through my veins and through the social demographic I was raised in, and all of the people I came to know and be influenced by.

At some point in the journey, it’s easy to hang your hat on something, whether it be Catholicism, Muslim belief, astrology, numerology, Scientology, Seventh-day Adventism, and such.

And yet, if you’re a seeker or a researcher or someone who loves questions, you’ll find the flaws in all of them.

I don’t think it’s so much about hanging your hat as it is finding a place where you don’t care about the hat at all.

Not caring about the hat wasn’t enough, though, so let me explain it.

The hat being a symbol of the thing that you believe in, whereas the place I’ve landed is a very, very, very simple faith.

And it doesn’t get any simpler than it needs to be.

There are certain mysteries that are not for man to know.

Be curious, sure. Do study, sure. Do your exegesis, your eisegesis, your apologetics research, for sure.

But the moment I hear someone say, “I found it and you haven’t. We love you, but good luck in the afterlife,” I have, at the moment, a distaste for that.

I’ve had that distaste before I even knew much.

And I’ve actually returned to it. Just the simple, simple, simple faith that is enough.

I have a huge respect for the atheist.

Not necessarily the atheist version 2, or version 2.1, or whatever version we’re up to now. But the atheist who has a genuine intellectual problem with some of the ideas being purported, and who has thought them through.

You’ve got the likes of Ricky Gervais and Christopher Hitchens making the argument that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gods that people have believed in throughout history. You don’t believe in any of those gods. I just believe in one less than you.

And, of course, who isn’t impressed by the way Christopher Hitchens could deliver a good Hitchslap?

But simply saying, “Well, I know I’m right because it says so here, and you’re wrong,” isn’t much of an argument.

These things need to be debated. They should be thought through.

I’ve heard various theologians who aren’t the least bit offended by such challenges. I’ve also seen others fall miserably, resorting to straw men, personal attacks, and attacking the man rather than the argument.

Ad hominem, if we’re giving it its proper name.

And then, of course, there’s the lazy atheist who doesn’t really know why he doesn’t believe in God but will happily die on that hill defending his position.

But again, I have a deep respect for those who have genuinely wrestled with these questions.

What I do find interesting is that some atheists can be remarkably Pharisaic towards the Pharisees.

And it’s certainly not exclusive to atheists. I’ve seen believers, from whatever brand of church they happen to attend, doing exactly the same thing.

I’m not impressed by that. In fact, it’s one of those things that can actually get a rise out of me.

You know, elevating yourself by pointing the finger at an overtly self-righteous man who has already elevated himself above everyone else.

It’s like watching two people climb the same ladder, fighting to get one rung above one another.

I actually have some very dear friends who belong to one of the aforementioned religious groups. The ones who believe they’ve been chosen, or that they’ve found the truth. That’s probably the wrong language, but we’re getting there.

They’re very, very gracious with me.

And I do try to think about it from their perspective. If they genuinely believe what they believe, then that’s where they’ve landed. That’s what they’ve settled on.

But what I feel from them is nothing but a deep respect for me. They don’t even try to proselytize me, which is respect right there.

And so I’ve developed a bit of a don’t touch them attitude.

That’s for them. That’s their faith. They’ve come to their own conclusions, just as I’ve come to mine.

And who, really, at the end of the day, is to say?

I don’t feel the need to challenge them or dismantle what they’ve found. They’ve shown me the courtesy of allowing me to believe what I believe, and I’m more than happy to extend the same courtesy to them.

That’s been a nice place to come to.

It reminds me of something I’ve heard both Christoph Waltz and Stephen Fry say. Waltz paraphrased it, and Stephen Fry, as his brilliant, brilliant mind does, quoted it verbatim.

And I’m just going to bulldoze it:

Uncertainty sucks, but certainty is absurd.

The original is attributed to someone rather famous who’s long since been pushing up daisies.

Voltaire, no less.

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”

And I have to say, lately I’ve been bothered by people who are just so certain.

Double-down certain.

Certain even when evidence to the contrary is put in front of them.

Certain to the point where they don’t want to hear, or be shown, any other version.

And even when you agree with them, they’ll sometimes try to force your agreement into something you didn’t actually say.

I’m going off script here, but you get my point.

That’s the sort of thing that raises my hackles.

And it can bring out a gift in me that I’ve long since suppressed.

The gift of sharp sarcasm.

I haven’t quite figured out how to use that gift for good and not evil, but those situations certainly inspire it.

The wrestling is over.

I think the wrestling is necessary for a time, but it’s wearying. It’s not a peaceful place.

I think the danger is looking for some affirmative answer, something you can witness either through your own eyes or ears, or your mind’s gate, that is unmistakably a God thing.

I’m not discounting that that kind of miraculous event happens for people.

And if it did happen to me, maybe I was too blind or deaf to hear it, but I don’t recall it.

And that’s more than okay.

Because the miracle of a trillion atoms spinning and orbiting and colliding and gravitating and pulsing and vibrating to make up this thing that I get to call me is a miracle in itself.

Multiplied by the billions who have inhabited this place.

And here I am, one little collection of atoms, trying to make sense of it all.

A bit of faith, a bit of doubt, a few unanswered questions, and the occasional bout of sharp sarcasm.

All floating around in the same cosmic soup.