theology
Posted: June 10th, 2012, 7:14 pm
Your departure was ill-timed. The world exploded again, live on camera, and everything changed. Into nothing new under the savage sun. A tiny malignant fraction always decides these things, but they say this one is different. A religion war. And when you run to Nevada two years later it still goes strong. In Boise, at McDonald's on Fairview Avenue, as you wait for styrofoam breakfast, you hear five old farmers at the next table. The word "truth" spears their exchange, and then you catch the subject:
"Muslims, all they want is to kill us, but Christ will save us."
"But it has to get a lot worse before it gets better."
"The Bible says a third of the world's population must die in the big war before Christ returns."
Verbatim.
When you get to Nevada it is beset by gray murk, the kind you fled. The state is in the grip. Yet murk breaks into a million backlit artworks on this terrain; a true artist would push on, but you lay low in your hovel. You'll go over this one more time, then leave it. You're familiar with the big war. Pastor Paul preached it in the big church . . . Every Sunday you rode up the hill to this place. Sunday school first, then church. Sometimes we skipped church; Dad was never sure about the pastor. When you got a license Dad let you drive the Mustang. The sermons were long and deadly, and Pastor Paul dropped his head when he spoke of the big war . . . Words long ago buried, unearthed again. You were sixteen, trapped on a pew with the key to a '67 Stang.
Religion went insane again; you need a position. But after much confused scrawl you resort to a search on the library computer, only to find fragments. Nothing close to consensus. Jesus was not big on wealth, and he helped stray riffraff, which gave us folk versions of the story. Yet he was no meek populist. In Mark he called a woman a "dog," although Mark's author was a bit on edge. He was many things to us. The one born to poverty. A working man. A teacher-healer. A rebel. A prince of peace . . . Nietzsche of course was less impressed. He favored "Jesus the idiot," as in Dostoevsky's naïve protagonist. A kingdom within, not promised nor bought. Thus Nietzsche hammered on the church, but he hammered everything. As for the big war, pin it on Jesus ignored, or lurid literal readings of conflict's inner aspects, the ones that sell.
Faith was more humble once, like Jesus and John in the desert, or the desert fathers in Egypt, outcasts of a new church not legal in Rome, or even Elijah's gentle murmur in his ear, beyond a stammer of corruption, rattle and wane down to your whoosh . . . Although Elijah and John heard louder tremors in silent intensity. God would descend in terror at any moment, and there it is. No universal purpose. Only one way out, and it's ugly . . . But we love our end times, our street corner freaks, flamethrowing preachers, wealthy death trade merchants, religions of money and power, religions of exploiting religion. Even mushroom genius Terrence McKenna had his timewave zero and exploding "novelty." All with their coming singularities, where the graph shoots off the page and we pass through the eye . . . And the rain comes hard that night. "Cows pissing on a flat rock."
~
A year or two later murk deepens again at your Tonopah hovel. Weather woman sees more of the same on channel 78, so you stay another day. Your talent to turn the desert gray is uncanny. Muddy mammoths rumble into the lot and blot the sky from your window, fire up their diesels in the morning and head out to fix things in the big empty. Can't imagine what. But you want no part of that muck. You can see outside now with the mammoths gone. The gray dome eases, cracked by dull white, and you watch the embattled sky as if watching millions of years of geology unfold by the minute. Dark collision zones and puff mountains in flux, white canyons and rifts scraping, coming apart . . . But the sky darkens again. No let up. Sheets of rain attack, and the road sign oscillates in sudden gusts. Rage comes on quickly in the old mining hills.
And you recall a weird story you heard on the radio, nothing to do with desert except maybe obsessions on the nature of space. Physicists are hunting for a God particle . . . A what? You know, the key to it all. This holiest particle will be essence itself, the indivisible kernel, maybe what holds zinging subatomics together. Find it and all cosmic secrets will tumble as dominos. Or at least we might answer childish queries like "why do things weigh what they weigh?" A child asks good questions. Between here and glory we plod on and try to explain the mundane, like "how do particles get mass?" As the radio explained . . . So you leave your puff gray geology and walk to the library again, as rigs slosh on Main Street, which makes no sense. The road is a place to write of broken motels and ribbons to the horizon, or clever allegory of ravens versus crows.
It comes up . . . “755,217 results, time: 0.18 seconds." At your fingertip. Big swig of cyber grog. No place to hide. Even the desert is wired to whole districts packed full of machines hooked in sheer data lust. Heat comes off that array; keep it hosed down. But the weird radio story fascinates, so you indulge . . . Beneath France lurk miles of catwalks and superconducting monster magnets. Metal octopus Star Trek nightmares built to smash particles harder than ever. And an even bigger smasher is slated for China. Leave it to big money to chase riddles of God, a sort of Babel tower in the crust.
And it's all because physicists are bored with their "standard model," about as reliable as an old Toyota pickup the last thirty years. But why are things the size they are? Such childish questions. It's because electron clouds a hundred millionth of a centimeter orbit nuclei a hundred thousand-fold tinier. But if electrons had less mass they'd have lesser orbits, and things would be smaller. But what is "less mass" among the massless? . . . You see the problem here, how the mind could fool itself. Or is it on the verge of a portal? How would acid man relate if his pizza got bigger or smaller based on mass theory? We need a unified theory to satisfy the scientists and stoners, priests and politicians. Okay, maybe not politicians.
Well, a guy named Higgs proposed a field of bosons, which other particles pass through and in so doing acquire mass. A mind screw . . . You mean, a pure, empty field can't exist? . . . Never mind. We need an elegant theory to explain it all, even gravity. No, we still can't explain gravity. Kind of puts us in our place. So seek ye the grail boson under France in a fearsome lair. Contractors build anything you want for billions of dollars, in this case using giant worms with metal teeth, so be careful what you want. Yet why not hollow out the rock and try to find God? What harm is there in it?
Then you come to the bit about black holes. These vicious new collisions might unleash small black holes . . . What? Okay, wait a second. Might this God be peeved at our prying into the fabric? Into dimensions we have no right to pry into, lest we unleash the tempest? Nonsense. Only a black hole massive beyond comprehension could swallow its corner of space, but still, you can't get the image out of your head of a crease forming in some French pasture, slowly at first, then a sudden sinkhole chain reaction, as the Alps swirl into a cosmic drain. Judgment day. Blip.
"Muslims, all they want is to kill us, but Christ will save us."
"But it has to get a lot worse before it gets better."
"The Bible says a third of the world's population must die in the big war before Christ returns."
Verbatim.
When you get to Nevada it is beset by gray murk, the kind you fled. The state is in the grip. Yet murk breaks into a million backlit artworks on this terrain; a true artist would push on, but you lay low in your hovel. You'll go over this one more time, then leave it. You're familiar with the big war. Pastor Paul preached it in the big church . . . Every Sunday you rode up the hill to this place. Sunday school first, then church. Sometimes we skipped church; Dad was never sure about the pastor. When you got a license Dad let you drive the Mustang. The sermons were long and deadly, and Pastor Paul dropped his head when he spoke of the big war . . . Words long ago buried, unearthed again. You were sixteen, trapped on a pew with the key to a '67 Stang.
Religion went insane again; you need a position. But after much confused scrawl you resort to a search on the library computer, only to find fragments. Nothing close to consensus. Jesus was not big on wealth, and he helped stray riffraff, which gave us folk versions of the story. Yet he was no meek populist. In Mark he called a woman a "dog," although Mark's author was a bit on edge. He was many things to us. The one born to poverty. A working man. A teacher-healer. A rebel. A prince of peace . . . Nietzsche of course was less impressed. He favored "Jesus the idiot," as in Dostoevsky's naïve protagonist. A kingdom within, not promised nor bought. Thus Nietzsche hammered on the church, but he hammered everything. As for the big war, pin it on Jesus ignored, or lurid literal readings of conflict's inner aspects, the ones that sell.
Faith was more humble once, like Jesus and John in the desert, or the desert fathers in Egypt, outcasts of a new church not legal in Rome, or even Elijah's gentle murmur in his ear, beyond a stammer of corruption, rattle and wane down to your whoosh . . . Although Elijah and John heard louder tremors in silent intensity. God would descend in terror at any moment, and there it is. No universal purpose. Only one way out, and it's ugly . . . But we love our end times, our street corner freaks, flamethrowing preachers, wealthy death trade merchants, religions of money and power, religions of exploiting religion. Even mushroom genius Terrence McKenna had his timewave zero and exploding "novelty." All with their coming singularities, where the graph shoots off the page and we pass through the eye . . . And the rain comes hard that night. "Cows pissing on a flat rock."
~
A year or two later murk deepens again at your Tonopah hovel. Weather woman sees more of the same on channel 78, so you stay another day. Your talent to turn the desert gray is uncanny. Muddy mammoths rumble into the lot and blot the sky from your window, fire up their diesels in the morning and head out to fix things in the big empty. Can't imagine what. But you want no part of that muck. You can see outside now with the mammoths gone. The gray dome eases, cracked by dull white, and you watch the embattled sky as if watching millions of years of geology unfold by the minute. Dark collision zones and puff mountains in flux, white canyons and rifts scraping, coming apart . . . But the sky darkens again. No let up. Sheets of rain attack, and the road sign oscillates in sudden gusts. Rage comes on quickly in the old mining hills.
And you recall a weird story you heard on the radio, nothing to do with desert except maybe obsessions on the nature of space. Physicists are hunting for a God particle . . . A what? You know, the key to it all. This holiest particle will be essence itself, the indivisible kernel, maybe what holds zinging subatomics together. Find it and all cosmic secrets will tumble as dominos. Or at least we might answer childish queries like "why do things weigh what they weigh?" A child asks good questions. Between here and glory we plod on and try to explain the mundane, like "how do particles get mass?" As the radio explained . . . So you leave your puff gray geology and walk to the library again, as rigs slosh on Main Street, which makes no sense. The road is a place to write of broken motels and ribbons to the horizon, or clever allegory of ravens versus crows.
It comes up . . . “755,217 results, time: 0.18 seconds." At your fingertip. Big swig of cyber grog. No place to hide. Even the desert is wired to whole districts packed full of machines hooked in sheer data lust. Heat comes off that array; keep it hosed down. But the weird radio story fascinates, so you indulge . . . Beneath France lurk miles of catwalks and superconducting monster magnets. Metal octopus Star Trek nightmares built to smash particles harder than ever. And an even bigger smasher is slated for China. Leave it to big money to chase riddles of God, a sort of Babel tower in the crust.
And it's all because physicists are bored with their "standard model," about as reliable as an old Toyota pickup the last thirty years. But why are things the size they are? Such childish questions. It's because electron clouds a hundred millionth of a centimeter orbit nuclei a hundred thousand-fold tinier. But if electrons had less mass they'd have lesser orbits, and things would be smaller. But what is "less mass" among the massless? . . . You see the problem here, how the mind could fool itself. Or is it on the verge of a portal? How would acid man relate if his pizza got bigger or smaller based on mass theory? We need a unified theory to satisfy the scientists and stoners, priests and politicians. Okay, maybe not politicians.
Well, a guy named Higgs proposed a field of bosons, which other particles pass through and in so doing acquire mass. A mind screw . . . You mean, a pure, empty field can't exist? . . . Never mind. We need an elegant theory to explain it all, even gravity. No, we still can't explain gravity. Kind of puts us in our place. So seek ye the grail boson under France in a fearsome lair. Contractors build anything you want for billions of dollars, in this case using giant worms with metal teeth, so be careful what you want. Yet why not hollow out the rock and try to find God? What harm is there in it?
Then you come to the bit about black holes. These vicious new collisions might unleash small black holes . . . What? Okay, wait a second. Might this God be peeved at our prying into the fabric? Into dimensions we have no right to pry into, lest we unleash the tempest? Nonsense. Only a black hole massive beyond comprehension could swallow its corner of space, but still, you can't get the image out of your head of a crease forming in some French pasture, slowly at first, then a sudden sinkhole chain reaction, as the Alps swirl into a cosmic drain. Judgment day. Blip.
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