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our beginning and our end

photo: my current studio… starting afresh with a series of playful lines…

At the source of all things there is a homing signal for life, for awareness and personhood.

From quasars to quarks, from the largest star to the smallest particle, all things are moving toward it and from it. But “it” is the wrong word. If there existed in human speech a truly non-binary word for a person (maybe Person?) that would be a better, truer expression of where things are moving. It’s well known in scientific and philosophical circles that the so-called “hard problem” is consciousness. In the best of modern thinking, we cannot really account for why or how consciousness emerged from the unimaginable original explosion of matter into being out of nothingness. The hard question, simply put is: out of Nothing, Something came into existence, and that Something has evolved from pure energy blast into stars and nebulae and worlds upon worlds—and if that were not surprising enough (something from nothing)—the biggest surprise is that we are here thinking about it and asking “Why?” The Big Bang resulted in us.

Science does pretty well with the “How?” question (astrophysics, mathematics, and cosmological and chemical analysis) but the best scientists and philosophers alike are stymied by the “Why?” question and by the fact that we’re even asking any question at all—and not simply existing as inert, unconscious matter hurtling through endless time and space. From the Big Bang to the (possible) final collapse of matter into pure energy blast—a kind of negative Big Bang—all things are moving toward this home, towards Personhood, towards self-awareness. For the sake of clarity, let’s give that something a name: conscious being or better yet just “personhood” or the Person.

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We certainly have had enough of phony religion and the sometimes thinly veiled hate that is clothed in religious language. Right? Moreover, the word “God” (like the word Love) is overused/abused––has become a curse word and dragged through excrement and trash, panic and worry, desperation and despair. The word God is an expletive and a byword. (So is the word “Jesus”…interestingly.) Why would anyone use the word God for this—use God or Jesus—as a curse word? We don’t say, “Aw Buddha!” or, spewing invective, “Gandhi!” or in anger and frustration say, “Martin Luther King!” expressing our fiercest displeasure or contempt. Maybe we sense something in the words “God” and “Jesus”? Bracket that thought about this particular word(s).

My point is not about religious language or its abuse. My point is more about the surprise of our self-aware questioning and the fact that there is even anything like a self or other—that is, anything like a conscious Person. Has it ever occurred to you that you are utterly unique—a one-off?—no one like you in existence? And all evidence points toward the fact that after you are gone there will never be a replacement of you. You may not have achieved anything massively important in science or medicine or made a world-changing work of art, but you are the only you that has ever existed or ever will exist.

And this should cause you, at the very least, a sense of wonder––perhaps even some small sense of fear or reverence. The Bible says, “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” But the fear in that sentence is not about being afraid. It is more like the word “awe”—trembling wonder and reverence. And what I am saying is that we ought to be trembling with awe at ourselves, at one another, and ultimately at the cosmic phenomenon of the Person.

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I’d like to tie this to the reality of Home, to Rest, to Peace, to the Hebrew word “Shalom”. This peace is a kind of perfect rest—total trust that the entire cosmos is headed toward a final flourishing and beauty and joy—not toward misery, emptiness, violence, unlove, or non-existence. All things are moving toward Shalom, toward that home, toward the country for which we have a homing signal, our deepest longing. But how can we yearn for a home we’ve never been to? Here I will go out on a limb and say that I believe we actually all have had a glimpse of that perfect peace, that true home. That glimpse may have been a momentary inexpressible joy that only glanced off of an otherwise suffering life. But we see evidence of it in the faces and bodies of children—even in children playing amidst bombed out areas where war and deprivation have descended.

Children (and young animals) all play.

And in that play is the innocent joy of just being—without fear or oppressive responsibility, without worry or pain. Of course, we all have pangs from seeing that childlike joy snuffed out by cancer or grinding poverty or war––but we also know that this joyful play is quite difficult to extinguish. You see this joy persist in the direst of circumstances. Children always play. Always laugh. Always find a way to make something into a toy. And this is really what I am trying get at in this overly long meditation: at the heart of all things is joy, childlike joy and play.

As a painter I have found myself orbiting around this joy my whole life. I sometimes cave into something close to despair, but it never lasts. Eventually just moving paint and color around on a canvas erupts into unselfconscious play and the surprise of joy. At my best, in those moments of complete self-forgetfulness, I come into being as an artist. But I am only an artist as long as that play lasts. This points me toward that home I’ve been speaking about: the Big Bang exploded with stars, all of which were headed toward this, toward joy and play and love. I believe this with every fiber of my being, and I see it everywhere. Even as the world seems to seethe with hate and violence and war, I see inexpressible joy at the center of all things.

Nothing can ultimately separate us from it. But “it” is not the right word. We are not speaking of a thing, but a Person. And that Person loves us with an inexorable Love––inviting us into the Dance, the play, the joyful freedom of… of… of what? Of home. We are headed for home and nothing can stop us––not even death. Life wants to live, and it lives in us and through us.

This is the answer to the question, “Why?” that perplexes philosophers. Joy.