I'm sure most of you are aware that a mile-wide tornado hit Oklahoma Monday and caused vast devastation. The headline on our local paper today, read, "Nature's Fury." I would think that such a headline would be offensive to all you literalists among us. After all, fundamentalists who believe in God, know that God causes such travesties to punish us for homosexuality and other such sins - and it is "worshipping a false god" to blame it on Nature. And literalist atheists know that scientific laws govern all this, and that it was caused by evil industrialists who cause global warming - and it is also evil to worship Nature as a god, just as it's evil and misleading to your children to acknowledge any sort of divinity.

I dunno. I kinda like the headline, even though it defies the literalist principles of both our atheists and our fundamentalists. I think that it's helpful for us to be mindful that there are things beyond us that are beyond our comprehension, that we may never be able to comprehend - and maybe we need to approach That Which Is Beyond us with awe and respect. And to my mind, That Which Is Beyond is also That Which Is Within. And even if "That" is not God, perhaps it is worthy of awe and respect. Maybe it's a primal thing, but what's wrong with primal?

This Science, of which our atheist friends speak so fondly, has brought us Chernobyl, and Bhopal, and a wonderful new thing called fracking. Science has brought us many wonderful innovations and understandings, but the hubris of Science sometimes prevents us from realizing that there is always something Beyond, always a further understanding.

Throughout all of time, humans have reached out to this ineffable Presence, of That Which Is Beyond and That Which Is Within. With varying degrees of success, they have used myth and ritual and symbols and poetry and music and contemplation to reach out to this Presence. Because humans mostly understand things in human terms, they have usually anthropomorphized this Presence, to the alarm of others. People referred to as mystics are often the ones who seem to get closest to forming union with this Presence, whatever It is. When people, believers and unbelievers alike, reach a point where they think they are able to name and define this Presence, they have failed. This is the point where our militant atheists and our militant fundamentalists converge - they believe they have conquered the Truth. The mystics and contemplatives also reach a point of convergence, whether they believe in God or not - understanding that That Which Is Beyond, remains beyond comprehension, only partly approachable through myth and ritual and symbols.

Maybe this Ineffable Beyond isn't God, and is simply the Ineffable Beyond. Does that really matter? I think what matters is that we know that there is always something beyond and within us that we cannot know and cannot control - but yet it is infinitely valuable to reach out to It, whatever It is.

If you want to know what I believe, that's about as close as I can come to explaining it. I will add, however, that I see That Which Is Beyond and That Which Is Within, as one and the same infinite Goodness.

-Joe-