Life, the Universe, and Everything

Last week, Julie kicked off our series on the creation. In her reflection, she focussed on the primacy of relationships. On our ability to engage with those around us with care and compassion. This is the creation at its most immediate, its most personal. Today I thought it might be worthwhile to expand this scope. To think about the creation at the cosmic level. And in doing so ponder the question of our place in it. ---- In Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, there is a seminal joke: When the characters ask the supercomputer Deep Thought “what is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything”, the answer is simple: 42. Now they just have to figure out what the question is… ---- Since human beings first came to think, they began trying to figure out what this question is: Who are we? Who is God? What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to exist? What is our place in the universe? What is our place within this wonderful and curious thing we call life? For many years of course, we assumed that we were the centre of the universe, that our place was special, as creatures “just below the angels”, made in the image of the eternal and immortal God. But as we continued to ask questions, we realised that we weren’t at the centre of things. we discovered science, and began to realise the sheer extent of the universe: and thus, question our central place in it. After Galileo, we had to contend with the fact that our tiny earth was only one among many. A small blue dot on the edge of the milky way galaxy. One among billions. Or as Nietzsche pointed out with his irrepressible gloom: “Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.” While this is a pretty grim assessment, it reminds us that in the grand scheme of things, we are indeed, small potatoes. But this need not get us down, remembering our own finitude can be a liberating thing. It reminds us of our relationship to other things. Of our limits and our interdependence. It forces us to be humble in the face of the creation. In the face of God. To experience the creation with a sense of awe. As biblical scholar Jon D. Levenson concluded, “The brunt… is that creation is a wondrous and mysterious place that baffles human assumptions and expectations because it is not anthropocentric, but theocentric”. We are indeed not the centre of the universe, God is. The ground of all being as Tillich so poetically put it. In the beginning, it is God who says: Let there be light… Let there be a vault between the waters… Let there be land and vegetation… Let there be living creatures… Let there be humans, made in our image. Let there be… This is an opening up, an invitation from God, for light and life to come into being. God creates space for the creation to flourish. When the Spirit of God hovered over the primordial waters, like an eagle over its brood, there was an encounter. An encounter between God and the stuff that was. From this encounter, everything else comes into being. At the centre of this creation is being All the listed entities have being Light has being, the waters and the land have being, the creatures of the sea, sky and earth have being, and of course we humans, have being. In this sense we are not special, until we learn that it is, we, who are created in the image of God In Acts we read that “In him, we live and move and have our being” It’s within this great milieu of stuff that we exist. So what is it that makes us different, well to paraphrase Heidegger, We are beings that, for whom this question of being, is important As far as we know, no other creature on earth (and perhaps the universe) ponders this eternal question: the question that we have been trying to formulate since we could first think. We know the answer is 42, but what is the question…? There have been many over the years who have asked this eternal question: What does it mean to be? If we were to isolate just a few we of the more miserable reflections on this question, we might come to Job, Hamlet, and Camus. These are people who asked this question from the pits of despair, the place where we might imagine no answers were possible. In the face of absolute loss and desolation, it was Job who first questioned God. Having lost everything, he is at his lowest, he says: “May the day I was born be wiped out. May the night be wiped away when people said, ‘A boy is born!’ May that day turn into darkness. May God in heaven not care about it. May no light shine on it. May gloom and total darkness take it back. May a cloud settle over it. May blackness cover it up. May deep darkness take over the night I was born. May it not be included among the days of the year. May it never appear in any of the months. This is a person at their lowest point. A person pondering the meaning of their own existence. And yet, the response from God is one that we wouldn’t expect: Where were you when I created the universe? Who are you to question me? In this moment there is no compassion, no immediacy. God reminds Job, and indeed all of us, of our limitations, of our finitude, of our place within the universe. Not masters over it, but participants within it. This is a shocking realisation, the possibility that we are not the centre of things. We are not the masters of the universe. Our being is one rooted in mortality… and yet we are part of this infinite and complex web of matter and being. ---- 2000 years later, it was Shakespeare’s most realised character Hamlet, who again ponders this question: To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ---- Here Hamlet, like Job, is at his lowest point, he is contemplating suicide. He is wondering whether or not death, the undiscovered country in all its finitude, from which no traveller returns; whether this might be better than the calamity of life, with its slings and arrows, its sea of troubles. Hamlet's dilemma is that although he is dissatisfied with life and lists its many torments, he is unsure what death may bring. He can't be sure what death has in store; it may be sleep but in perchance to dream, he is speculating that it is perhaps an experience worse than life. This man is weary, and the question is simple. To be, or not to be? This is the question that the existentialist Albert Camus takes to the extreme. This is the question. The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Is it better to live or to die? To be or not to be. If life is difficult and meaningless, and ends in death anyway, then what is the point? For Camus, this is not a question to be avoided, but one to be faced head on. When we really ask ourselves this question, we discover that the answer is a resounding yes! This is the gift that death offers us. It reminds us of the beauty of life, the exquisiteness of being. Tillich suggests that, when we acknowledge our existence as finite, the stronger our ultimate concern about being and meaning, the stronger our longing for participation in the divine life. When we experience the anxiety of finitude, particularly of being-towarddeath, we begin to understand our place in the grand scheme. We no longer take our existence lightly. We realise that our lives are not meaningless. We come to learn that our very being is a gift from God. A life to be lived. Life to be shared and enjoyed with the rest of creation. ---- When we wonder about of our place in all of this, we realise our connection to all things. Our questions are shared. Who are we? Who is God? What does it mean to exist? What is our place in the universe? Is life worth living? The answer of course, is found within the question itself… Now all this sounds a bit esoteric, but it’s important to remember. The truth of life is found not in the answer, but in the very asking of the question. In the very act of living. Our connection to each other and to the creation is as deep as our own thoughts. It’s God who makes this connection, it’s God who invites us into relationship with others, with the creation, and with God. It’s God who hovers over the creation, like an eagle over its brood, still calling us forth into light and life. The ground of all being, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. The ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.