The Tao Te Ching and God: THE MUSICAL!

Tao Te Ching, Ron Hogan Translations:

#4 How much Tao is there?
More than you'll ever need.
Use as much as you want,
there's plenty more where that came from.

You can't see Tao, but it's there.
Damned if I know where it came from.
It's just always been around.

#14: You can't see Tao, no matter how hard you look.
You can't hear Tao, no matter how hard you listen.
You can't hold on to Tao, no matter how hard you grab.

But it's there.

It's in you,
and it's all around you.

Remember that.

#25: Something perfect has existed forever,
even longer than the universe.
It's a vast, unchanging void.
There's nothing else like it.
It goes on forever and never stops.
Everything else came from it.

I don't know what else to call it
So I'll call it Tao.
What's it like?
I can tell you this much: it's great.

Something that great lasts.
Something that lasts goes a long way.
And something that goes a long way
always comes back to the beginning.

Tao's great.
Heaven's great.
Earth's great.
And someone who's in touch with Tao is great, too.
Those are the four greatest things in the universe
and a Master is one of them.

Someone who's in touch with Tao
is in touch with the earth.
The earth is in touch with heaven.
Heaven's in touch with Tao.
Tao's in touch with the way things are.

So why did I have all those up there? for me they describe God. it has given me the words i have been searching for awhile now to talk about how i view God. just replace the word Tao with the word God, and you get what i have spent this whole blog trying to do.

for me, the word "God" is an exploder when it comes to descriptions. ex: God is LIKE a father, only no body, outside of time and space, you can’t see him, he’s not married to your mom, he’s not really actually a he and in fact, not like a father at all. If you take a concept that we know and multiply it times infinity, it becomes meaningless; it's exploded. So if both God and the Tao are eternal and outside of space and time then neither cannot be described at all with our words as they are bound by references to time and space. Therefore God and Tao can only be experienced, yet never fully at one time. What our brains can handle, what we can experience, is but a fraction of the fullness of Tao/God.

it would be like saying "I expect something from you... but it has no due date and it can't be located in this dimension." Many would stop here and say "well, then it's worthless, serves us no earthly good, and i can't believe it." that's a fair option. prolly the more sane one. but that doesn't keep out this strange mystical state i find myself in oft times. have you ever had stuff line up so perfectly that it could go no other way? we laugh and call them co-incidences in our limited knowledge, but they aren't.

we want to search for these moments, to capture them with language or art... but we can't. not really, not fully. all theological language really conveys no information at all... none that can't be logically reasoned, only experienced. so all that stuff in the bible should NEVER be taken literally. God can't be contained in factual language. all those words should make you feel something, some experience should be triggered.

we really can't say what the reference is; we can only speak to experience. all we have is metaphor:

yup.. that's the musical part of it ;-D

so clever.

anywho, where is this in the Bible? everywhere! but the two places to point to would be: Exodus 31, Moses asks to see the face of God. God tells Moses to crawl into a cave and God will put ‘his’ hand over the opening and Moses will be able to “See my behind.” This is a literal translation of the Hebrew. A deeper translation would be, “you will see where I was.” Not even Moses could see God in the present. This is a God we get only glimpses of. These highly personal encounters are still filled with mystery and, although we may experience God’s love, justice, spirit, or forgiveness directly, we should never take it for the totality of God.

and in John 14:8: Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us."Jesus answered: "Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?10Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?"

Philip is asking for a Theophany, seeming to forget his Jewish heritage and the fact that no one can see the face of God and live... largely, because God doesn't have a face. if God does, it prolly looks a lot like your neighbor's... or your enemy's. your mom's (no, YOUR mom), and maybe, to someone else, yours, given the right moment.

just my random thoughts tonight... now it's time for this fool to go to bed. 

Where does Evolution Leave God?

from a discussion from the facebook COEXIST forum, a dude posted this:

The Wall Street Journal asked Richard Dawkins (evolutionary biologist) and Karen Armstrong (Christian apologist) the question "Where does evolution leave God?" I thought folks in this group might find their replies interesting:

My own take is that Armstrong concedes so much ground to evolution that she unintentionally describes the same god as Dawkins does: a god with nothing to do, and one that does not, technically, exist. Somehow Armstrong still derives value and meaning from such a concept.

my response:

Holmes Rolston III in his epic volume "Genes, Genesis and God: Values and their origins in Natural and Human History" takes the reader on a journey from creation of the universe to the rise of homosapiens and our development of culture, ethics, and religions. Stepping back to appreciate the grandeur of it all, Rolston asks "Where is God in this evolutionary saga?"


Nothing that the universe demonstrates entropy (constantly decreasing measure of energy and order leading to its death), Rolston proposes that one entity which is moving in a negentropic direction (increasing in energy and order): life. he states "Nature and energy have been creative, making more out of less." Rolston declares that the information and memory in herent in DNA is needed in such amounts that it could not have floated in from nowhere. therefore: "Over evolutionary history, some thing is going on 'over the heads' of any and all of the local, individual organisms. More comes from less, again and again. A more plausible explanation is taht, complimenting the self-organizing, there is a ground of information, or ambience of information, otherwise known as God."

in Rolston's model, the providence of God, or in imitation of God, provides a negentropic drive against hte unremitting death throes of the universe. God's providence intersects with human and natural history within and around us. i think this is so... but the question still remains of HOW exactly such a God intersects with humans and creation. is this God thinking (like traditional theology states) "Don't sweat it, i got it all under control." or is God thinking (like more progressive/liberation theologies state) "Stop sitting on your hands, get up and do something with yourself and i'll provide the energy and guidance in your work."?

i'm still on the fence but leaning towards progressive, although both are plausible in certain contexts.

There's no such thing as Secular

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers:

"I had a french pastor friend who wanted to become a saint. At the time i was very impressed with him, but i had to disagree and said in effect that i wish to learn to have faith... I discovered later, and discovering right until this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. one must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint or a converted sinner or a churchperson, a righteous person. by this worldly-ness i mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems and successes and failures, experiences, and perplexities. in doing so we throw ourselves completely in the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world."

i was once told by a conservative associate of mine that the bible is easy to understand and has just one message. he then went on to say that he knows God's will and lives completely in christ. he later made clear his wish that i'd come to christ as he did, then i'd know the Truth. i then asked how he could be a person of faith if there were no mystery to his life? faith is the very act of NOT knowing what is going to happen but going anyway? what's the phrase? but for the grace of God go I?

in my view, the opposite of faith is certainity. no need for faith if you know how things are going to turn out. faith is a funny thing. faith is living in the mystery and just having this glimmer of a feeling that things will work out in your favor. usually things work out when you're not focus on yourself but another person. funny how that works out huh? it's the christian paradox: the only way we find ourselves is in others, the only way we believe is trusting the unknown. Faith uses a lot of prayer. and prayer does not change God, but it changes who prays.

we must live in this world. faith is not something you go to or keep in a church and only visit it on sunday. faith is something that is lived in every second of everyday. faith like this finds God in music, movies, and others and takes joy. Take joy when you see an old friend or family member. take joy at accidentally encountering someone you know at Saveway, God is there. Take joy at the random conversation you had with a complete stranger on the the Metro or while walking your dog. God is there. God is there, just below the surface, playing hide-and-seek and hoping that God is seen in the mudane day-to-day.

Having a faith like this helps you go into that room... you know the one. that room in the hospital on the CPE rounds that no one wants to go in. or that room in that house on your block where "that family" lives. or that nursing home with the lonely senior who has lost their life partner. or that prisoner that has so much regret and no hope. too much hurt, tragedy, suffering. Faith like this is knowing that in these rooms, there is no hope... and you go in anyway.

be mindful! God is out there. have faith to put yourself out there where God is.