Friday, April 3, 2009

Thinking Outside Our Finite Box

I enjoyed reading this ancient oriental poem;

The Tao is empty
but inexhaustible,
bottomless,
the ancestor of it all.

Within it, the sharp edges become smooth;
the twisted knots loosen;
the sun is softened by a cloud;
the dust settles into place.

It is hidden but always present.
I do not know who gave birth to it.
It seems to be the common ancestor of all, the father of things.


I remember early thoughts as a child lying under the star filled sky at night, "How far does the universe go? If we came to a wall what would be beyond that wall and the next and the next?"

As I became a bit older and read more deeply into the scriptures I found myself trying to make the connection of a God that lives off somewhere in heaven yet lives inside me. Is so far away and untouchable, yet so intimately close. How One could be without mother or father and never be born, yet always to have existed.

A Native American saying made sense to me at that point in my life, "You become a man (grown person) when you realize how much there is that you do not know."

The ancient poem above was written 5,000 years BC. I guess it doesn’t matter so much when eternity is forever.

No comments: