Unlimited & Endless (part 2)
Previously….Our world has unlimited resources and endless boundaries. I’m looking at it. It’s there spinning above our heads — more than we could ever want, or use, or even need. It’s natural revelation, and whatever else it may be saying — clearly it shouts to you and me that there are unlimited resources and endless frontiers!
I sit up beneath this brilliant canopy and let the obvious envelope me. A crisp and cool autumn night but the truth of it warms me inside and I remember. I remembered, one of only a couple positive childhood moments. My father sits with me on the sidewalk. It's a warm sunny day in LA and lots of neighbors outside enjoying the weather. I smell the chalk. He is carefully drawing on the cement using colored chalk.
Orange for the Sun. Red for mercury. I watched his strong, youthful hands make the circles and shade them in as he spoke. Venus, I don’t remember the color, but when he got to Earth he used Blue and Green as he explained how everything revolves around the Sun. I thought him the smartest man alive that day and I loved him. Since then, I have made many trips around this Sun, so many repetitions trapped beneath its radiance.
I don’t think my father understood then what I understand in this moment. To be sure, he could appreciate the marvelous beauty and mechanics of the Universe. But that’s as far as he could go. He, like so many, was still captive, under the influence of the terrestrial spell and it’s dark magic. It’s seductive and pervasive magic. What is this spell? I don’t know if I can precisely put it into words. But you can know that you are being influenced by it when you think and act as if our world consists only of our planet. Earth equals world. That is the limiting end result of the spell.
As such, the vastness of space is reduced to just a backdrop to our endless motion here on Earth. As modern scientific folk, we laugh at our less knowledgeable predecessors who once believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe — and yet, we still act as though it is. How are we substantively any different in our approach to living? On the other hand, when we break free from the earthy magic we discover a new axiom: Universe equals world.
I can hear my father’s voice, “Get your head out of the clouds son!” He said that a lot. Truth be told, he used to tell me to get my head out of a lot of places. Maybe, you’re thinking something similar. I mean, ok, so the Universe is my world — so what? I can’t leave the planet, I can’t mine gold on the moon to pay my mortgage or put food on the table. I don’t have a starship to cruise to some distant planet for a getaway weekend. So excuse me if I live my life as though my world is my planet!
Fair enough, your point is made. Sadly, I hear you saying, “There is no tree.” Which means, if you’re right — there is no escape from the control of unjust governments, no relief from the competition for resources and boundary lines with crisp flags snapping in the wind.
I climb down the side of the building. Turn my flashlight on and follow the circle of light back to my CHU — the room where I lived. CHU stands for containerized housing unit. Not much different then a planet if you just pull the frame back and notice the really big picture.
I’m lying in my bunk and can’t fall to sleep. The room is pitch dark and my brain an electrical storm. Then it happens. A tiny bit of current jumps from one neuron to the next and so on, until it hits the target. My eyes open and blink. If the tree exists, I sit up to jot down the thought and then say out loud, “then I might just know where to look.” (To be continued)
