A Pocket God

Wow we are really smart. These days we can have a pocket calculator, a pocket phone/computer/radio. From our pocket we can listen, send, even watch the ballgame. In days past there was a sense of wonder that an invention was able to not put time in a bottle but in one's pocket. Someone long ago figured out how to take a big, bulky time piece that was mounted on a wall or a mantle or even perched high up in a tower and put in all in a small metal orb that you could...yes...put in your pocket and "tell" time.

Now we've done the same thing with information. What used to reside in some dark basement with magic wheels that would spin with tapes of information now rests in our pockets. How did they get all that from the basement to our pockets?

So now we are fooled into thinking that we have time in our pocket and the totality of information in our grasp. So perhaps it is "time" that we pause a moment and put some things in perspective.

As I listen to how God is captured in containers of late I wonder what basement some have been wondering around in. It seems now that God can provide riches if we follow the right formula. God can champion specific causes for certain countries. God, while we were napping, took flight lessons and is now our "co-pilot." We've done it again. We have managed to take something really big and a bit mysterious and put it in our pockets so that we can "use" it whenever needed.

Nope...It just isn't so. The old story clearly says that the real God will have none of this "idolatry." Yea, that's what it's called. Whenever we reduce that which is supposed to be in part beyond our reach and put it in a place where we can reach it "conveniently" we participate in an age old ritual called the "golden calf" party.

It seems that when we creatures of the light get inpatient with any darkness we light a fire and create a pocket god. It works for a while. It even feels good. But it's not real and it's not God.

God is the one whose light takes 100,000 years to go from one end of the Milky Way galaxy to the other end. (By the way "Milky Way" is our term. Just because we can name it like a candy bar does not mean that it is "ours.") Our galaxy with is 100 billion or so stars circles around what is known as the virgo cluster. The virgo cluster contains around 2,000 galaxies.

It seems that the closest galaxy to us is the Andromeda galaxy, again named by us because it sounds really neat. It is a mere 2.5 million light years away. You can see it as a small point of light in the night sky. It looks like "just another star" but careful, you can't put in in your pocket and make a wish.

The truth is that this tiny speck of light is rushing toward us at about 500,00o miles per hour and will one day ram into our Milky Way causing quite a candy crunch. In case you are thinking of turning off your computer and "rushing" to the store to get milk and break, take a deep breath and continue reading. You've got some time...about 2 billion years or so before it slams into our party.

" O God, when I look at the heavens, the moon and the stars, the work of your fingers, what are human beings that you are mindful of us?" That is what some psalm writer(Psalm 8) composed one night before pocket watches and handheld computers messed up the wonder of it all.

We can make us a pocket god but as nice as it feels it will not be real. The real one always has a touch of wonder and mystery that will not allow us to capture the essence of the divine. The reason that fundamentalism is so dangerous in any religion is that it makes religion into creeds and dogmas and reduces the Holy to some pocket set of beliefs. This makes the "owner" of the pocket god the one who can say to the rest of us that we do not possess "the truth." Since we do not know the way or we do not practice a certain custom we are either lost or we are infidels.

It takes 250 million years for our candy bar to orbit around its "core" that is believed to be a black hole whose energy is equivalent to around 4 million of our suns. Is this non-pocket God "mindful" of us? Faith is not a "10 steps" to something card that you can put in your pocket. Faith is the amazing assertion that the answer is a very humble, quiet "yes."
Bless you,
jody