In Which I Ramble On

My first thought on seeing that picture was the scene at the end of The Voyage Home where the Enterprise crew is perched on the wing of that Klingon Bird-of-Prey they hijacked and turned into a time machine to kidnap some humpback whales to save the Earth from a destructive alien probe following which Admiral Kirk was demoted and that chick from 1984 who followed them to the future joined the crew of a science vessel which is weird because she doesn’t have any starship experience at all which makes me think it must be especially easy to be assigned to a starship in which case I seriously wish we lived in the world of Trek because then I could easily join a starship crew and see the universe because I’ve always wanted to check out Jupiter in person and hang out with an Andorian.  

That would be awesome.

Incandescence

Here’s the third of my retreat reflections for ya.

Having reviewed my general understanding — which is by no means necessarily the correct understanding — of God, I would like to develop further my growth in knowledge of him whom I love and to whom I have dedicated the last eight years since my baptism and all years ahead of me. Pope Benedict described an understanding of God analogous to mine as “inscrutable, violent majesty,” a vision of God as “incandescent power;” it’s certainly an apt way to put it, encompassing his mystery in the brightness that causes blindness, a light so deep and strong we can’t really look at it with understanding, so we shield our eyes and look away. This God is God in strong gale winds, God in the rush of storm waves, and not the quiet presence Elijah experienced, the famous “tiny whispering sound,” or the hiddenness of the Holy Eucharist, which is a constant challenge to the understand I’ve tried to hold on to. I’ve been caubght in God’s omnipotence and struggled with his love, two things which have seemed difficult for me to try and reconcile. 

Truth be told, no reconciliation should be necessary. Pope Benedict also said that God is the “power of love.” No, not the theme song to Back to the Future, as awesome as Huey Lewis and the News were. God’s incandescent power that drowned the Egyptians and humiliated the prophets of Baal is his love for his people, the people he has chosen. It’s that love that’s drawn me, that love which has provided for me that love which has instructed me, and that love which I’ve found compelling whenever I begin to delve into the depths of prayer. My response to the long desert only shows the level of my mercurial nature, the extent to which I misynderstand.

Of course God is “wholly other.” Of course God is inscrutable, his ways never to fullky be grasped, the scope of his nature unbroachable. It’s difficult to truly understand his love except by poor analogy or comparisons on wholly-insufficient scales: God loves me, for example, more than either of my parents. True, but the difference is so staggering and vast, it’s like saying that Jupiter is bigger than a housefly. Even that fails to communicate the scope of failure. That vastness eludes me, and so I have difficulty knowng what that means. How can I love others if I can’t deal with the love of God? I wear the cross, I pray, worship, believe — but do I love? Mike power [music director for the retreat who also gave one of the talks] said it perfectly — I say I love, but it’sa thing I say, and I guess to an extent it’s true, but it’s not something I really understand. Even as I recall the times I’ve been moved to tears in my love for God, expressing and feeling some infintensimal fraction of his own, part of me wonders — is this what it means to love God? I try to avoid sin and to be virtuous — is this the whole drama of a relationship with the divine? There are depths I haven’t plunged, and it’s more than simply theologizing.