Heaven Is …

I am a child of summer. I would LOVE nothing more than living in a perpetual summertime. I love being outside in nature. I love hearing birds sing and lawn mowers at 6 am. I love wearing nothing more than shorts and a shirt and going around barefoot. I love open windows and cool breezes. I love green flowering and fruiting plants. I love the sun’s warmth on my skin like a blanket. I love summer.

I am not a child of winter. I don’t miss cold, snow and wind chills. I don’t miss frosted windows, windshields and mustaches. I don’t miss the hollow sound of creaking, empty trees dealing with overweight snow and brittle winds. I don’t miss bundling up in layers upon layers of clothing just to get the mail. I don’t miss the salty roads, dirty snow piles, and slush. I don’t miss the sunless days where cold comes on you like a prickly sweater. I don’t miss winter.

I tell people, who don’t live in the south that we have one spring, two summers and a really hot season. I don’t miss winter. Of course this is a preference and I know others who have EXACTLY the opposite view of mine. I have a distant relative with whom I share the same name, who lives in Norway and LOVES the winter and can’t wait for summer to be over. Others I know love the changing of the seasons and would miss summer leaves turning to fall, fall colors turning to a white blanket, winter white turning to the new growth of spring, and spring sprouting into a full blown summertime.

I cannot see myself in a cold climate again. But I can’t say I will NEVER be in a cold climate again. I find an even deeper truth than my love of summer. I find that God has plans that may not have ANYTHING to do with my preferences. What happens if God calls my wife and I back to Michigan, or to a church in Northern Alberta? No, sorry God, I prefer summertime. How about Hawaii or the Florida Keys?

Actually that is a picture of heaven for me. Right now, my preferences and God’s plan are often at odds. But there will come a time when they are one and the same. There is a place where I will be just where God wants me to be and that will be the same place where I prefer to be. That time and that place is heaven. I can’t wait (well, I can, but you know what I mean) to move there!

Heaven is where your preferences and God’s plan become one.

Es Es Percepe

Is there really an external world? Is there really a world outside of our experience? When you see an apple, you picture it in your mind (as you are right now); what happens when you close your eyes and think of something else? Does the apple disappear? Does the world disappear when you close your eyes? If everyone in the world closed their eyes and emptied their minds at the same time would the universe disappear? When we group our regularly occurring experiences we give them names. “Apple” is our word for a consistent collection of sweet, red, crunchy sensations of a certain size, texture, and smell. But that is all an apple is. Or is it? According to George Berkeley (1685-1753) that is all an apple is. To suppose that it is something more, something OUT THERE, is to go beyond the evidence of experience. Worse, it is to think the absurd thought that sweetness can exist untasted and red can exist unseen. To believe that something exists in the realm OUTSIDE the senses is to build a shaky scaffolding to stand on. Yet it might surprise you to know that George was a devout Christian. He actually used this “idealism” as evidence and proof for God. Berkeley argues that God perceives and therefore sustains the whole of the universe whether we happen to be looking at it or not. For Berkeley the continued existence of everything is proof not only of God’s existence but also his benevolence. If God blinked, not only would our world go out of existence but so would we. The Latin “es es percepe” means “to be is to be perceived”. What would we be without others experiencing us? What would we be without our own senses? What would we be without God perceiving us? With us being unable to trust our own senses reality and truth, then, is how God perceives it. The truth corresponds to reality as GOD perceives it: NOT OUR PERCEPTION. Our very existence depends on GOD perceiving us: NOT OUR PERCEPTION of HIM! I think ancient scripture writers understood this when they gave us the priestly benediction: “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may the Lord make his FACE SHINE ON YOU and be gracious to you; may the Lord TURN HIS FACE TOWARD YOU and give you peace.” May the Lord PERCEIVE you too.

Quantum Faith

There is a weird, yet incredibly powerful faith in something called “quanta”. The faith was first developed by a German physicist called Max Planck, who proposed that energy comes in tiny lumps called “quanta”. The faith was extended by Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac, and Werner Heisenberg; all priests of the faith in the 1920s.

It is because of the faith of quantum mechanics that we have most of our modern technology. This faith in quanta brought forth semiconductors and lasers which, in turn, brought forth all modern computers, MP3 players, cell phones, and many lifesaving medical treatments and scanners.

One of the priests: Niels Bohr commented on the faith, “If you are not astonished by quantum mechanics, they you haven’t understood it!”

Despite the tremendous success of the faith quantum mechanics remains shrouded in mystery because no one really knows how or why it works. It make certain predictions about the unseen world that go completely against our common sense. For instance, it explains how an atom can exist in more than one place at the same time until we check to see what it is up to and then it magically appears based on our looking for it. So it is everywhere until we seek it and then it appears in that particular place as if we called it there. This faith also says that an electron can spin both clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time until we try to measure it. So it is everything in every way until we seek to limit it.

I am anticipating the ACLU will soon ban the study of Quantum mechanics in all Schools.