May 2, 2018 – Dots, Math and Paranoia
We bought this little camper a few months ago called a “Tab” and have been dying to take it out for a test journey, but the weather decided to give us the second coldest April on record, and the record for April snowfall. All that cold stuff started to change for the better a few weeks ago, so that finally, this last Sunday, we had a chance for a simple one-nighter in a local state forest. It worked out great, giving us a chance for a long walk the following day. We are taking these long walks - six and seven and nine milers - because we are going on a “Walk to Mary” this weekend, a twenty -one mile walkathon from De Pere, near Green Bay, to the apparition shrine of Mary at Champion. Even with practice, it will be a killer. What, are we nuts?
Of course we are, and it was exactly on that premise – that we are religious nuts – that I got off on a discourse about religion and fanaticism on that long hike. I noted that I agreed with the Catholic Church on some integral things – for instance, that the material world must be put in its place beneath the spiritual world – which is part of the reason for the mind-over-matter twenty -one mile hike. But there are other things that I just cannot get myself to believe because they seem too pat, too “olde-time” medieval, too fashioned by the hierarchy for an ignorant people. Purgatory? Judgement Day before a celestial tribunal? A seat at the table? All of these things seem to allude to something important, but I feel that they should not be taken literally.
What I feel, of course, might not have anything to do with the truth, but I try. In fact, we all try; we all try to connect the dots, to make things make sense. It is what people do. Thing is, when it comes to the big stuff like “What is the meaning of life?” or “What force was it that made the universe?,” we have woefully little information. So we do what the Catholics did (to add to the Bible), and what the ancient Greeks did, and what we all do to this day: we filled – or fill – in the dots.
We can look at the points of light in the sky and try to make sense of them by imagining them into animals or mythical figures, as the Greeks did. Of course they are not those animals or gods. Or we can try to put those points of light together just as the Greeks did, but out of ignorance, get even that scheme wrong. And both groups, the Greeks and the guys who got the Greeks wrong, can go on thinking that they put the dots together just so to make sense of it all, but both of those groups will have gotten it wrong. It is not just them; none of us has all the information, so all of us put the dots together wrong. We are all trying to put a million piece jigsaw puzzle together with only 17 pieces in hand. We try and we try, but we just can’t do it.
But we think we can, because that is our need and our nature. If a group thinks it can and agrees on the scheme, it is called culture (and religion within that culture for the big picture); if only one or a few connect the dots together to explain the big picture, we call it paranoia. In both cases, we are wrong, but in a group we have at least the security of being wrong together.
This is not so in all instances, however. Years ago, I read that the ancients, particularly the Egyptians, considered mathematics a sacred tool given to us by the gods. To become a mathematician, one first had to pass through a rigorous course in a mystery school. I could not understand that then, because math had been given to me as a dull mechanical tool – and a pain in the butt – in our secular school system. Now, however, I understand: math is the tool not just to build, but also to understand the mind behind the universe. It connects the dots in an unambiguous way, one that cannot be mistaken. It always works under the circumstances that it is suited for, and it makes sense. It works everywhere for everyone. It is an astounding discovery of the mind behind the dots, and leads us directly into the mind of the gods (God).
We, however, no longer see math that way, and I have come to the conclusion that if the average priest could raise a person from the dead, that, too, would become just another ho-hum event in our ho-hum world. The thing is, as the mathematicians of old knew, this is NOT a ho-hum world. This is a world, from our limited perspective, of miracles and will always remain so because we will never have enough pieces of the puzzle to work out the big picture, at least through our normal senses. But we have to believe that we DO understand. We are all paranoid delusionals who believe in a fantasy world and then yawn about it and wish we had magic, or Peter Pan, but not really because we wish to live our lives in a bored, unsatisfactory manner. We do this, one can only conclude, because we prefer boredom and meaninglessness to the fear of not-knowing.
I know that frightening feeling of coming close to knowing; I have been on the edge and it is a terrifying place. In a lifetime, many of us have, and the thing is, once we have, we cannot help but want to go back, even with the terror. We cannot help but look for a way that will bring us back to that terrifying cavern that is so frightening, yet so beautiful, so filled with wonder and meaning – a place that we know on first sight is our destiny.
And so we find a proper vehicle that fills in the dots just enough, while tugging us along towards the edge, towards that endless gulf of mystery. And in this, like little kids going back to try the bicycle again, we rediscover the miracle that is life without the paralyzing fear that made us reject the world of the spirit in the first place.
So we accept those concepts – that practice or religion – with its silly quirks to get at the big picture without freaking out, at least not entirely. This is called belief.
Odd how it all works out, too. Just as I reached the conclusion in my (overly winded) monologue during that long walk that life IS a miracle with, from our perspective, anything possible, I noticed something small and unnatural within a bush. Had there been just a little more foliage, I would have missed it, and even as it was, it was odd that I saw it. I got closer, pushed the branches away, and noticed that it was a small porcelain angel that someone had hung there. This was a state forest, not a shrine, and there was no reason that we could see that this would have been placed there, much less so because almost no one would see it then, and no one at all in the summer months. It was also then that my wife thought to start the rosary before the walk was finished – which we finished right at the very end, in perfect time.
Paranoid? Delusional? Yes, maybe, but the idea behind it is not. We may be religious nuts – to go on a twenty one mile walk we must be - but miracles are real. We may be connecting the wrong dots, but the bigger picture, life itself assures us, is bigger than any of us can imagine, something in which anything is possible. As humans, we need to stay focused on that bigger picture to complete our destiny. To help us, there is always an angel to jolt our routine so that we might see beyond, as long as something in our lives – some belief or attitude – is there to remind us of our humble ignorance in the face of the infinite.
We bought this little camper a few months ago called a “Tab” and have been dying to take it out for a test journey, but the weather decided to give us the second coldest April on record, and the record for April snowfall. All that cold stuff started to change for the better a few weeks ago, so that finally, this last Sunday, we had a chance for a simple one-nighter in a local state forest. It worked out great, giving us a chance for a long walk the following day. We are taking these long walks - six and seven and nine milers - because we are going on a “Walk to Mary” this weekend, a twenty -one mile walkathon from De Pere, near Green Bay, to the apparition shrine of Mary at Champion. Even with practice, it will be a killer. What, are we nuts?
Of course we are, and it was exactly on that premise – that we are religious nuts – that I got off on a discourse about religion and fanaticism on that long hike. I noted that I agreed with the Catholic Church on some integral things – for instance, that the material world must be put in its place beneath the spiritual world – which is part of the reason for the mind-over-matter twenty -one mile hike. But there are other things that I just cannot get myself to believe because they seem too pat, too “olde-time” medieval, too fashioned by the hierarchy for an ignorant people. Purgatory? Judgement Day before a celestial tribunal? A seat at the table? All of these things seem to allude to something important, but I feel that they should not be taken literally.
What I feel, of course, might not have anything to do with the truth, but I try. In fact, we all try; we all try to connect the dots, to make things make sense. It is what people do. Thing is, when it comes to the big stuff like “What is the meaning of life?” or “What force was it that made the universe?,” we have woefully little information. So we do what the Catholics did (to add to the Bible), and what the ancient Greeks did, and what we all do to this day: we filled – or fill – in the dots.
We can look at the points of light in the sky and try to make sense of them by imagining them into animals or mythical figures, as the Greeks did. Of course they are not those animals or gods. Or we can try to put those points of light together just as the Greeks did, but out of ignorance, get even that scheme wrong. And both groups, the Greeks and the guys who got the Greeks wrong, can go on thinking that they put the dots together just so to make sense of it all, but both of those groups will have gotten it wrong. It is not just them; none of us has all the information, so all of us put the dots together wrong. We are all trying to put a million piece jigsaw puzzle together with only 17 pieces in hand. We try and we try, but we just can’t do it.
But we think we can, because that is our need and our nature. If a group thinks it can and agrees on the scheme, it is called culture (and religion within that culture for the big picture); if only one or a few connect the dots together to explain the big picture, we call it paranoia. In both cases, we are wrong, but in a group we have at least the security of being wrong together.
This is not so in all instances, however. Years ago, I read that the ancients, particularly the Egyptians, considered mathematics a sacred tool given to us by the gods. To become a mathematician, one first had to pass through a rigorous course in a mystery school. I could not understand that then, because math had been given to me as a dull mechanical tool – and a pain in the butt – in our secular school system. Now, however, I understand: math is the tool not just to build, but also to understand the mind behind the universe. It connects the dots in an unambiguous way, one that cannot be mistaken. It always works under the circumstances that it is suited for, and it makes sense. It works everywhere for everyone. It is an astounding discovery of the mind behind the dots, and leads us directly into the mind of the gods (God).
We, however, no longer see math that way, and I have come to the conclusion that if the average priest could raise a person from the dead, that, too, would become just another ho-hum event in our ho-hum world. The thing is, as the mathematicians of old knew, this is NOT a ho-hum world. This is a world, from our limited perspective, of miracles and will always remain so because we will never have enough pieces of the puzzle to work out the big picture, at least through our normal senses. But we have to believe that we DO understand. We are all paranoid delusionals who believe in a fantasy world and then yawn about it and wish we had magic, or Peter Pan, but not really because we wish to live our lives in a bored, unsatisfactory manner. We do this, one can only conclude, because we prefer boredom and meaninglessness to the fear of not-knowing.
I know that frightening feeling of coming close to knowing; I have been on the edge and it is a terrifying place. In a lifetime, many of us have, and the thing is, once we have, we cannot help but want to go back, even with the terror. We cannot help but look for a way that will bring us back to that terrifying cavern that is so frightening, yet so beautiful, so filled with wonder and meaning – a place that we know on first sight is our destiny.
And so we find a proper vehicle that fills in the dots just enough, while tugging us along towards the edge, towards that endless gulf of mystery. And in this, like little kids going back to try the bicycle again, we rediscover the miracle that is life without the paralyzing fear that made us reject the world of the spirit in the first place.
So we accept those concepts – that practice or religion – with its silly quirks to get at the big picture without freaking out, at least not entirely. This is called belief.
Odd how it all works out, too. Just as I reached the conclusion in my (overly winded) monologue during that long walk that life IS a miracle with, from our perspective, anything possible, I noticed something small and unnatural within a bush. Had there been just a little more foliage, I would have missed it, and even as it was, it was odd that I saw it. I got closer, pushed the branches away, and noticed that it was a small porcelain angel that someone had hung there. This was a state forest, not a shrine, and there was no reason that we could see that this would have been placed there, much less so because almost no one would see it then, and no one at all in the summer months. It was also then that my wife thought to start the rosary before the walk was finished – which we finished right at the very end, in perfect time.
Paranoid? Delusional? Yes, maybe, but the idea behind it is not. We may be religious nuts – to go on a twenty one mile walk we must be - but miracles are real. We may be connecting the wrong dots, but the bigger picture, life itself assures us, is bigger than any of us can imagine, something in which anything is possible. As humans, we need to stay focused on that bigger picture to complete our destiny. To help us, there is always an angel to jolt our routine so that we might see beyond, as long as something in our lives – some belief or attitude – is there to remind us of our humble ignorance in the face of the infinite.
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