Thursday, October 12, 2006

Point Omega -- The Shifting Sea of Broken Glass

This poem cycle was composed in 1999, a few months after the tragedy in Colombine.

It began with the line, "It's kind of hard to understand, my friends..." and continued from there. I had no idea of where the journey would lead.

With the 9th of the series the imagery begins to slowly turn away from the darkness, towards the light, towards unity in Point Omega -- however, we have yet to cross, on naked feet , the "Shifting Sea of Broken Glass".


9. The Shifting Sea of Broken Glass

To bring life forth, in force, from primal slime,
Takes more than time, it takes a will "divine".

It takes a vision imbued in all that is!

In the very beginning dot of creative-fizz
There is a well of souls and many contingency plans.

Genetic code alone can't make a man!

It's no mystery! It's a subtle fact
That a horse, a cow, a goat, a dog, a cat --
No thing can be, without the synergy
Of every thing in eternity...

Edison's light, without electricity,
Is what? A lump of cold glass. A thing
to crush and throw away.
And who, I ask,

Will cross this shifting sea of broken glass?
_______________
There is no creed to which I subscribe.

None.

I am neither deist, agnostic nor athiest.

Although fairly well versed in several creeds, I hold fast to none of them.
I see the creeds as one might see languages. If you know more than one language well, you know that it is ridiculous to say that one language is "better" or that another is more "true". On the other hand, even an ameteur linguist knows that certain concepts are more handily expressed in one language than another.

Keeping with the analogy, my mother tongue is Lutheran (a Protestent dialect of Christianity). But I can speak Catholic quite well and can understand Jew, Muslim, Hindu and even a bit of Native American -- if people take the trouble to enunciate clearly.

In brief: I accept that the creeds are there and that they are a heritage of our common humanity.

Furthermore, my understanding is that each of them, with more or less success, formulates and codifies certain aspects of the Reality which founders of these creeds have gained. How they gained these insights is another matter.

That said, it's obvious that "divine" in the poem above must have a special meaning. I would hope that the poem itself would clarify some of the meaning.

I am not making a case for some form of Intelligent Design!

However, the way a universe like ours unfolds from a singularity, it seems inevitable that galaxies, stars, planets will form. It seems inevitable that rocky planets like ours as well as those in the Third Galaxy will be well-salted with ninety some odd elements in various combinations.

It is also seems inevitable that carbon will have the special chemistry that it does and therefore it is inevitable that life will appear and from there -- sentience. It is as if a universe imbued with a tendency to develop conscious intelligence. It is a general religious intuition that conscious intelligence and self awareness leads towards what Teilhard de Chardin called "Point Omega" and "Unity".

HOWEVER! There is no certainty that Point Omega will actually happen on this or any other planet, or that it ever has!

Another odd thing about how a universe like ours develops is that the stars are so far apart. If we were to, just as an example, unleash some force that made our sun blow up, it would not affect any other planets except those in our solar system.

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