Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A Pinhole View of the Universe

We perceive only a tiny fraction of what is going on around and through us. 

Take, for instance, electromagnetic vibrations. We see a tiny swath visually, feel some waves as heat, harness others for radios. We hear a minute fraction of the sounds that weave around us and pass through our bodies every moment. 

A gnat pushes air away as it moves, like we shove aside water while swimming. The earth feels solid and unmoving but it's hurtling around the sun, spinning at angle. We can't feel the "elastic nature of space and time(1.)" -- it seems to us that time "marches on" steady and measurable, that space is space, not an expanding, incomprehensible mass of empty.

We know so little, see so little, feel so little. To even admit this is true stretches, annoys, terrifies us. It is also glorious. And the "physical" is just one aspect -- what about the relational, emotional, spiritual realities that we move through and in, that affect us and that we shape with our willing and our waiting, our actions and our ideas? These things too are mysterious, vast, uncharted, dangerous and beautiful -- like the cosmos we can imagine a mere fraction of.

"Whoever has ears, let them hear." -- Jesus

(Inspired in part by "First You Build A Cloud... and Other Reflections on Physics as a Way of Life" by KC Cole.)
(1.) (p.50. Einstein via Cole).

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