Our perception of the visible world is bathed in years of interaction with what we know as “matter”. Matter, by even a grade school definition, occupies space and has mass (which always seemed like circular reasoning to me: “matter has mass” is like saying, “excitement is the state of being excited”). We accept the definition because the concept of matter not counterintuitive like so much the physics lab now offers us. The weight we lift at the gym; the car that we drive; the gallon of milk we lug in the house—these things all bend gravity (if we want to get quantum about it) and have what we would describe as “substance”. Though gases and liquids are also matter, we picture them more or less as particulate solids in amorphous forms. And we really understand solids: The boulder I sat on recently at one end of Central Park on a warm New York afternoon did not mystify me. It was cold and hard and obvious and had no problem supporting me while I did the more ethereal business of breathing in the cultural vibe around me.
So, when we are told that atoms are the building blocks of matter, our naivety leads us to imagine them as little microscopic bricks—micro-mini Legos—at least that seems to be my first memory of the imagery. When we get older and are exposed to the solar system model of atomic structure, with its electrons orbiting around the nucleus in the center, we still retain the idea that if we could somehow enlarge a few of those atoms and hold them in our hands, we would be holding “something”—solid and substantial as we understand matter. They are the building blocks of matter, so they should be “matter-like”, right? The fact that the macroscopic appearance evaporates on the molecular level is useless to us in everyday perception.
Given all the familiar history of experience, when the true nature of matter shows up at our door, our surprise is understandable. The fact is that atoms are 99.999% (and even more decimal 9’s, but they aren’t even necessary to make the point) EMPTY SPACE! These building blocks of matter are full of nothing! They are mostly “nothing”, with just a faint breath of “something” dancing around! Everything substantial is made from very, very little that is substantial! Matter itself is an absolute WONDER, and way less “matter-like” than our perceptions have been educated to believe. (I’m not even talking spirituality, yet: I’m still just being amazed by the “science” alone!) It has actually been said that if you removed the empty space from all atoms, the world’s population would fit inside a sugar cube, or a few sugar cubes, depending on who you hear!
It was Democritus who said, sometime between 460 and 370 B.C., “Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.” He was onto something. When it comes to meeting the expectations of your life’s skeptical onlookers, this is a good way to view the “power” of what they have to say. Your atomic structure—your substance—is your own and their opinions can blow through your empty space leaving you unaffected. They are lighter than air and they do not matter or have mass. Cruel words and voiced criticism that has hurt you can be relegated to the space between atoms and sent out of your chemistry forever when you realize that you are not called to let them shape your form—and you are certainly not called to make them a part of your permanent solidity. Jesus said to tell mountains to move and they would obey you. Surely He endorses the banishment of opinions that have stood like obstacles between us and the expression of the destiny that He wired into us!
But, there is something in the universe that is not matter, but definitely not empty space! The matrix of the universe—the grid, the continuum, the insubstantial substance—is SPIRIT, or at least it obeys the laws of the Spirit that God set into motion. It is spirit-connected and spirit-responsive! I believe—and it works for me--that the empty space in atoms is where SPIRIT can breathe and interface with the realm of time and circumstance that we call material. I actually also wildly (and joyously) believe that when the Bible talks about being “filled with the Spirit,” there is a sense in which God is inviting us to have our empty space invaded! The spirit of man is not just a “Care-Bear”-like deposit projecting from the middle of our belly. Spirit is “us” throughout, but in another dimension. When we are filled with the Spirit, that empty space tunes in to that dimension.
I don’t know your level of exposure to charismatic Christianity as you read; therefore, I don’t know the level of shock or disbelief you might be registering right now. But even Carl Sagan declared that matter is completely made out of virtually nothing! It seems to me that if I am going to have a God in my life, I should have the One who goes about filling nothings with Himself, and that is the image of the Biblical God that I see and experience everywhere! He is not the producer of empty space but the Redeemer of it! He fills things; especially gaps between things, where He has snuck in unnoticed but waits to be discovered. He fills the edges whenever we force Him out of the center! He fills the universe with the substance of Himself, encrypting it in Spirit-code that wears the garb of “nothing” just to get us interested!
Charismatics love to talk about the metaphors like the “wind” of God as a description of God “showing up”. But this wind, for me, is more than just a goose-bump producing breeze or gale and certainly more than just a feeling. The wind of God is Spirit invading my empty space, rejuvenating, realigning, exciting, healing, redeeming, and even continuing to carry on His creation.
Years ago, I was struggling with a chronic condition—you know the kind—the ones that just won’t go away even though you are carrying on living. I needed the somatic habit of inflammation in me to be broken and I was on medications seeking to affect that, but every doctor visit said, “Well, you’re better, but not quite yet.” I was praying, but my atoms seemed really substantial and solid in their resistance, stubborn in their matter-hood! One day, a lady who even I remember as being almost frighteningly charismatic, wanted to pray for me, and she wanted to do it in front of a group of non-charismatic teachers with whom I worked at the time. (I always have a translation program running in me for the help of almost every culture in the room—that day I was going into meltdown mode.) But the lady didn’t ask permission—she just took my hands and began to pray that the WIND of the Holy Spirit would blow through me. I remembered the empty space in atoms and I saw a picture in my heart of God’s Spirit-wind filling that, overwhelming the minute bits of mass with another Reality. The experience captured my attention and seemed more real to me than any physicality in the room—including the dumbfounded stares of the watchers.
My matter was just not substantial enough to refuse change and comfort when the wind came. My empty space was no longer taking its orders from little bits of mass—it was in contact with a higher Reality. The wind had blown on the inside of me—in the space between things—in the 99.999% empty space. I was filled with the Spirit. Things didn’t change instantly on the outside, but they did change. The boulders had been shifted—the logjam was dislodged. But, then, isn’t it often the fulcrum of change when we finally pry our vapor-locked attention away from our discomfort long enough to breathe the air of a higher existence?
We really are made almost out of nothing. The book of James says, “Your life is but a vapor,” but that has never seemed like a negative to me. Those with active minds know all too well how rapidly living can become a burden: the weighty and vast considerations of every opportunity and decision. The ability to visualize relationships and possibilities and see connections that others miss contributes to the massive challenge of conducting affairs on this planet and the weight of responsibility can be like a boulder when you slip into “over-thinking”. I welcome the perspective shift that comes from realizing that even my best intricately crafted and carefully reasoned understandings are lighter than air and can be blow away like smoke at a moment’s notice! I am happy not to be married to my multiple scenarios! Any good ones will come again and any bad ones can just go!
The matter that most desperately needs a Spirit-wind invasion through its empty space is the matter of the gray and white kind! Our brains do real biochemical and electrical business, so the biblical idea of “casting down imaginations” (resisting fears and self-defeating thought patterns) can seem like we are trying to change matter—because we are. It is real wrestling when the brain is working on the brain in an effort to change and challenge long-standing patterns! Those low percentages of actual mass seem very powerful when they are engaged in a tug of war of the right and left hemispheres. (Should I risk and be “free” or should I calculate and strategize? Do I “let go” or “hold on”? These thought-volleys under the “own worst enemy” category rage and ravage the mental landscape!) Thankfully, we have empty space to fill! Even when our brain is chocked full of busy bee analyzing, it is STILL predominantly full of empty space! There is PLENTY of room for the Spirit-wind to blow! There is plenty of room for an infusion from another realm—one that will release us from the tug of war by lifting us completely above it! You don’t fight mass with more mass: you overcome it with Spirit filling the empty space between. There is a gale-force expression of the Spirit of God available to remind us that we are really not nearly massive enough to impede Him, even on our worst day!
Thursday, May 08, 2014
Monday, May 05, 2014
D: DIGITAL (or A: ANALOG)
I draw inspiration from vast and various sources. Several years ago, I experienced a sea change while watching a YouTube video that explained the difference between digital and analog. In my simple terms, “analog” means continuous flow, while “digital” means pulsed moments of “sampling”. The most common illustration of the difference, and one that is helpfully grounded in everyday experience, is that of a clock. An analog clock has hands that move in continuous motion around its face, visually offering you a “flow” of time (ignore the fact that there may incremental jumps due to the ratcheting of the clockworks and just go with me here—it’s mostly smooth motion to the observer). But a digital clock changes in leaps, pulsing forward to the next minute or hour with a “reading” that is stuck at the previous minute or hour until the next apparition. It is simply 1:10 until it is 1:11 on your digital clock (unless of course you have a digital stopwatch, but again, work with me).
Computers are digital. Binary code—the basis of all computerized languages and therefore the universal language of the planet--is simply a pulsing between two poles: on and off; open and closed (electrical gates); zero or one. Analog readings flow while digital readings bounce! When the analog human voice is digitized, millions of “samplings” of the sound (48,000 and upwards per second) are recorded. The current trend in audio technology is a reversion to analog to provide the “messy color” of the voice. But digital formatting is so incredibly efficient at data storage and noise reduction that it that it will always be a force in the recording industry, no matter how many folks go old school and buy vinyls.
These are general comparisons between analog and digital, but the YouTube video I mentioned took my imagination to another level with just one statement: “Billions of years ago, the universe went digital.” Boom! I was gone. To be honest, I don’t care much about the time it gave—that has never been the point for me. The pulse that had just burst upon my understanding had nothing to do with earth age, but everything to do a beginning that was digital—something out of nothing—a pulse out of silence—an ex nihilo entrance of life emerging from a void of random potential! “The universe went digital,” for me was tantamount to declaring that God said, “Let there be light…”
I have long meditated on the way the Creator created. First He “hovered”—incubated, communed with His own heart (and the fellowship of the Trinity)—then He spoke! The Hebrew word for “hover” summons the imagery of the flapping of bird wings, or the VIBRATION of anything that is percussive! (A percussionist has some ground to say, “In the beginning, God drummed…”) The Genesis account says that God hovered over the surface, which was described as “deeps” which were covered in “darkness”! Every artist who has ever stared at an empty canvas or writer that has been blinded by the empty page understands that incubation! There is so much heart-reality to be expressed and the inner dynamics of preparation are sometimes “tohu va bohu” (Hebrew for “formless and void”). But then comes the release, when the words come or the paint flies, or the song emerges. There is clearly a rhythm of “suddenlies” in the creative process—there are “bursty” moments where nothing turns into something in an instant. (And for the further comfort of the artists, I add an alternate translation of the pre-active state of tohu va bohu that is less gentle: “chaos and desolation”!)
God created the world in this digital way—a way that some of us for years have enjoyed summarizing as, “nothing, nothing, nothing--POW”! And, He really, really—not just in theory or for poetic significance—made us in His image! We, too, are junior creators! We are participators in the way hearts burst forth digitally into “art” (or anything)! We are following His lead in hovering over formless voids and incubating dreams until the moment of emergence! We are chaos theorists with flapping and fluttering inner butterflies of God-birthed desire that are waiting to manifest as storms on the other side of life!
I recently modified the summary statement, however, based on extensive research in the trenches of life. The digital way God works is often: “Nothing, nothing, nothing…deep nothing---POW!” There is often a “deep nothing” phase before the “pow,” and sadly, that is where many people walk away, for it is there that the analog progress-checking mechanisms go completely haywire! We may have reached détente with our sense of our own identity in the “nothing” stage: “I’m not that bad…I’m making some progress…enough to feel good about.” But at “deep nothing”--right before the burst of God-stuff--it is like being at Mach 0.999 in the first plane to break the sound barrier! Everything is shaking and every dial is going analog crazy, producing readings that point to disaster. When Chuck Yeager exceeded Mach One, he described the sensation as a “poke through Jell-O”. It was smooth the moment he was on the other side, but just before that POW (sonic boom), there was a whole, whole lot of shaking going on.
I recently met a worship leader who is legendary, not just for who he is in the large church that employs him, but also for his stature as a lover and practitioner of music in general, as well as a passionate advocate for the Kingdom potential of all the arts. One of the things that made me want to meet him was that a mutual friend had told me, “We often have to say to him, ‘Not now—it’s too much—give your inner world to us in smaller doses.’” Needless to say, I could identify, as that feeling pervades much of my mirroring in others. I filter my fractal-talk carefully not to overwhelm the dinner conversations! On the day of our meeting, we had a time constraint, and my dear, calm husband was to become to some degree the mediator of the conversation’s dynamics. It felt like the Dave Matthews song, “So Much To Say,” and both the intense ones in the room could have easily gone down several different trails and never returned had not the ever-facilitating Paul added his guidance.
Just last night, I was talking to my son about this amazing conversation and he asked me about how we packed so much in. I heard myself reply, “It was just digital!” I realized that we spoke in “code” if you will—Spirit-code where the pulses are strategically placed to maximize information-content and efficiency and reduce noise! I realized then that my artistic rhythm of incubation and release even informs my relationships! I sensed the “divine” nature of the appointment, so I had to go digital: There was no time for analog slowly infused connection decorated with small talk! This was a moment that years of hovering over the face of private inner “deeps” and sometimes darkness had prepared. Given a space of time with a like-minded “unique” Kingdom thinker, it was POW time! I knew how to place words like seeds, rather than describing whole trees! (It was just as creative as a burst of art—and I pause to think that we should all handle the relationships in our lives with more incubation and release, rather than analog continuous rapid-fire of thought!)
We use the word “flow” very glibly in Charismatic church circles and it does have merit, for there is a River and rivers do FLOW! BUT, flow is still analog. It is beautiful and life-giving and definitely to be bathed in, but it is also limited by our perception of time and space. If we would dare lose sight of our own bearings long enough to take in the pulses of the digitized lightenings of God, there would be a completely different level of “flow” that would open to our experience. To really know God and flow in His creative power, you must lose sight of your own measurements on a fairly regular basis and begin to feel comfortable now and then in the land of “deep nothing”.
In a great performance by Ed Harris as the iconoclastic painter, Jackson Pollock, there is a beautiful scene that illustrates this. Pollack had been commissioned to paint a huge mural—covering an entire wall. With the beautiful score by Jeff Beal in the background, we see Ed Harris sit and stare at the canvas—seemingly locked in a room alone with it—for what the film leads you to believe is literally DAYS. Then, in a moment, a perfectly choreographed change in the music shifts the scene from incubation to sudden release! Ed Harris (Jackson Pollock) leaps to his feet and begins what can only be described as a feverish flurry of motion that culminates with the huge wall-to-wall canvas covered completely with wildly applied paint in rapid fire. Pollack, who to my knowledge never claimed to know God, acted like one made in His image. He hovered over the face of the deep—the deep in the world and perhaps in himself—and then He exploded forth in a pulse of expression that endures to this day even beyond his years—and is visible even to analog observation!
Church is analog, but Kingdom is digital. We need the analog because people live and breathe—and hurt and cry—in this realm of continuous experience. But we are not limited to the analog. The space in between pulses is precious, too. The highly efficient realm of God—the Kingdom—is all around everywhere, waiting to be sampled a million times a minute. Analog—God showing up in real life—is beautiful, but never assume if you don’t see Him that He is not there. AND, if you are an artist—an apprentice in the school of the Master-Creator--don’t for one second devalue your digital incubation periods where darkness seems to be on the face of your inner waters. There are bursts within you that will change your world. God will lead you in your personalized version of, “Let there be light…” as you explode light to your sphere, your local cosmos, your new beginnings. Take heart in the deep nothing—the POW of God is on the way. Your world may be analog, but your Kingdom universe is DIGITAL!
Computers are digital. Binary code—the basis of all computerized languages and therefore the universal language of the planet--is simply a pulsing between two poles: on and off; open and closed (electrical gates); zero or one. Analog readings flow while digital readings bounce! When the analog human voice is digitized, millions of “samplings” of the sound (48,000 and upwards per second) are recorded. The current trend in audio technology is a reversion to analog to provide the “messy color” of the voice. But digital formatting is so incredibly efficient at data storage and noise reduction that it that it will always be a force in the recording industry, no matter how many folks go old school and buy vinyls.
These are general comparisons between analog and digital, but the YouTube video I mentioned took my imagination to another level with just one statement: “Billions of years ago, the universe went digital.” Boom! I was gone. To be honest, I don’t care much about the time it gave—that has never been the point for me. The pulse that had just burst upon my understanding had nothing to do with earth age, but everything to do a beginning that was digital—something out of nothing—a pulse out of silence—an ex nihilo entrance of life emerging from a void of random potential! “The universe went digital,” for me was tantamount to declaring that God said, “Let there be light…”
I have long meditated on the way the Creator created. First He “hovered”—incubated, communed with His own heart (and the fellowship of the Trinity)—then He spoke! The Hebrew word for “hover” summons the imagery of the flapping of bird wings, or the VIBRATION of anything that is percussive! (A percussionist has some ground to say, “In the beginning, God drummed…”) The Genesis account says that God hovered over the surface, which was described as “deeps” which were covered in “darkness”! Every artist who has ever stared at an empty canvas or writer that has been blinded by the empty page understands that incubation! There is so much heart-reality to be expressed and the inner dynamics of preparation are sometimes “tohu va bohu” (Hebrew for “formless and void”). But then comes the release, when the words come or the paint flies, or the song emerges. There is clearly a rhythm of “suddenlies” in the creative process—there are “bursty” moments where nothing turns into something in an instant. (And for the further comfort of the artists, I add an alternate translation of the pre-active state of tohu va bohu that is less gentle: “chaos and desolation”!)
God created the world in this digital way—a way that some of us for years have enjoyed summarizing as, “nothing, nothing, nothing--POW”! And, He really, really—not just in theory or for poetic significance—made us in His image! We, too, are junior creators! We are participators in the way hearts burst forth digitally into “art” (or anything)! We are following His lead in hovering over formless voids and incubating dreams until the moment of emergence! We are chaos theorists with flapping and fluttering inner butterflies of God-birthed desire that are waiting to manifest as storms on the other side of life!
I recently modified the summary statement, however, based on extensive research in the trenches of life. The digital way God works is often: “Nothing, nothing, nothing…deep nothing---POW!” There is often a “deep nothing” phase before the “pow,” and sadly, that is where many people walk away, for it is there that the analog progress-checking mechanisms go completely haywire! We may have reached détente with our sense of our own identity in the “nothing” stage: “I’m not that bad…I’m making some progress…enough to feel good about.” But at “deep nothing”--right before the burst of God-stuff--it is like being at Mach 0.999 in the first plane to break the sound barrier! Everything is shaking and every dial is going analog crazy, producing readings that point to disaster. When Chuck Yeager exceeded Mach One, he described the sensation as a “poke through Jell-O”. It was smooth the moment he was on the other side, but just before that POW (sonic boom), there was a whole, whole lot of shaking going on.
I recently met a worship leader who is legendary, not just for who he is in the large church that employs him, but also for his stature as a lover and practitioner of music in general, as well as a passionate advocate for the Kingdom potential of all the arts. One of the things that made me want to meet him was that a mutual friend had told me, “We often have to say to him, ‘Not now—it’s too much—give your inner world to us in smaller doses.’” Needless to say, I could identify, as that feeling pervades much of my mirroring in others. I filter my fractal-talk carefully not to overwhelm the dinner conversations! On the day of our meeting, we had a time constraint, and my dear, calm husband was to become to some degree the mediator of the conversation’s dynamics. It felt like the Dave Matthews song, “So Much To Say,” and both the intense ones in the room could have easily gone down several different trails and never returned had not the ever-facilitating Paul added his guidance.
Just last night, I was talking to my son about this amazing conversation and he asked me about how we packed so much in. I heard myself reply, “It was just digital!” I realized that we spoke in “code” if you will—Spirit-code where the pulses are strategically placed to maximize information-content and efficiency and reduce noise! I realized then that my artistic rhythm of incubation and release even informs my relationships! I sensed the “divine” nature of the appointment, so I had to go digital: There was no time for analog slowly infused connection decorated with small talk! This was a moment that years of hovering over the face of private inner “deeps” and sometimes darkness had prepared. Given a space of time with a like-minded “unique” Kingdom thinker, it was POW time! I knew how to place words like seeds, rather than describing whole trees! (It was just as creative as a burst of art—and I pause to think that we should all handle the relationships in our lives with more incubation and release, rather than analog continuous rapid-fire of thought!)
We use the word “flow” very glibly in Charismatic church circles and it does have merit, for there is a River and rivers do FLOW! BUT, flow is still analog. It is beautiful and life-giving and definitely to be bathed in, but it is also limited by our perception of time and space. If we would dare lose sight of our own bearings long enough to take in the pulses of the digitized lightenings of God, there would be a completely different level of “flow” that would open to our experience. To really know God and flow in His creative power, you must lose sight of your own measurements on a fairly regular basis and begin to feel comfortable now and then in the land of “deep nothing”.
In a great performance by Ed Harris as the iconoclastic painter, Jackson Pollock, there is a beautiful scene that illustrates this. Pollack had been commissioned to paint a huge mural—covering an entire wall. With the beautiful score by Jeff Beal in the background, we see Ed Harris sit and stare at the canvas—seemingly locked in a room alone with it—for what the film leads you to believe is literally DAYS. Then, in a moment, a perfectly choreographed change in the music shifts the scene from incubation to sudden release! Ed Harris (Jackson Pollock) leaps to his feet and begins what can only be described as a feverish flurry of motion that culminates with the huge wall-to-wall canvas covered completely with wildly applied paint in rapid fire. Pollack, who to my knowledge never claimed to know God, acted like one made in His image. He hovered over the face of the deep—the deep in the world and perhaps in himself—and then He exploded forth in a pulse of expression that endures to this day even beyond his years—and is visible even to analog observation!
Church is analog, but Kingdom is digital. We need the analog because people live and breathe—and hurt and cry—in this realm of continuous experience. But we are not limited to the analog. The space in between pulses is precious, too. The highly efficient realm of God—the Kingdom—is all around everywhere, waiting to be sampled a million times a minute. Analog—God showing up in real life—is beautiful, but never assume if you don’t see Him that He is not there. AND, if you are an artist—an apprentice in the school of the Master-Creator--don’t for one second devalue your digital incubation periods where darkness seems to be on the face of your inner waters. There are bursts within you that will change your world. God will lead you in your personalized version of, “Let there be light…” as you explode light to your sphere, your local cosmos, your new beginnings. Take heart in the deep nothing—the POW of God is on the way. Your world may be analog, but your Kingdom universe is DIGITAL!
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