A Universe on a Journey

From the minute to the mammoth, order emerges spontaneously in the Universe. The natural state of things is to pull everything toward patterns.

It works a lot like a magnetic field. If you put a magnet under a glass table and move it around, iron filings scattered on top of the glass line up in patterns. Without any direct interference or manipulation, order emerges quite naturally as a result of the influence of the magnetic field.

From the instant of the Big Bang onwards, the Universe—from atomic particles to star systems and living cells on planets like Earth—has been drawn into higher and higher states of order, just like iron filings under the influence of a magnet.

The creation, beginning from a singularity, manifests increasing centeredness and complexity, until after billions of years we now have the miracle of human consciousness.

No one designed it, no one made it.

The creation emerged from an underlying tendency toward the development of organization, the result of an attraction toward growth that seems to organize not only subatomic particles and galaxies but that pervades our individual lives and influences humanity’s collective journey.

What kind of influence am I talking about?

I see an underlying reality that is the ground of matter’s tendency toward patterns of increasing complexity, centeredness, and harmony.

This ground is certainly not just a force, nor mere energy. These are still part of the finite matter that was created.

But neither is this ground of existence “God,” in any sense that most people mean when they think of God.

As a matter of fact, I have difficulty speaking of God. The moment you mention the word, you see, people’s eyes glaze over. And I include people who talk about God all the time. God for many is just an idea they have that comforts them, not a vital reality that is the ground of all being.

In my judgment, much of people’s God-talk is hollow, because it’s talk about something that many of these people clearly have no real experience of. It’s a concept, a dogma they cling to about a God who is somehow supposed to be “in control” of the creation.

It’s an emotional thing too—a longing for someone to take care of us by intervening in difficult situations and making everything all right.

This God-talk is not just hollow. It’s actually impervious to the divine mystery that I suggest is the underlying meaning of everything.

In other words, mention the word God, and the very real mystery that births and bathes the Universe is immediately lost on most of us. We are into imagining something that’s nothing like the creative source of everything.