…AN OMNISCIENT GOD ?

Stage 77 / Sunday 12 July / Triacastela

 

How fortunate I am to be able to rest in a village where the houses are built of cut stone, where the pilgrims only pass by and where I have the whole day of Sunday to withdraw and put my reflections of the past week (187 km) in order:

 

« Inform matter in memory of a conscious life detailing an omniscient God ? »

 

Up to know, of all the profiles that my reflections lead me to envisage for the virtual statue that I am constructing of Him in hiking, that of a “safeguiding” and spirit God seemed to me the most appropriate. Can I now attempt to give to this face that of an omniscient God? It is certain that omniscience and spirit, in the meaning that I have given to be like a source of inspiration surging in my consciousness, would make a rather good pair. All the information of the universe would be able to bear fruit.

 

Also, it is easy to understand that in trying to connect these intelligible entities which are life, memory, consciousness, information and spirit, one would arrive at conceiving as a connection one single god omnipotent, if not several. These divinities or this Unique divinity would be capable of ruling everything, immersing Itself in the deepest and most secret corners of human beings. Everything is observed, all is recorded and known, and popular wisdom is witness to it: “A good deed is never wasted!” or “A wrong deed is never without consequences!”

 

From there to affirm an intentional power governing such an omniscience, that is once again perhaps making too much of the religious authorities suffering from subjugation and therefore overly concerned with scrutinizing consciences. But if I envisage on the one hand for the God of the Scriptures the profile of an omniscience less tyrannical, and on the other hand the generous profile of the spirit, the statue that I sculpt will be able to take more simply the traits of a “safeguiding” God.

 

In forming thus the traits of this face, my chisel has gladly left a pile of stones at the foot of the statue. These fragments consist mostly of other attributes that I have considered in certain stages. It was largely human ones rather than divine, and therefore much too fragile. These attributes were frequent in the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hindu mythologies. To a lesser degree, these myths influenced certain passages in the religions of the Book with heroic character capable of extraordinary feats (Noah), living many years (Methuselah), or even immortal beings (Enoch).

 

Cleansed, freed from poetic unrealities and charming locations in the orient, the statue with a “safeguiding” face is trimmed more and more in order to keep only the traits that my intuition approves of and that I find the most rational. In trying to keep myself away from religious discourse, I feel more and more the physical realities of nature both a force and a finesse of surprising interaction. I realize that scientists still only have means of observation still too coarse, as much from the cosmological angle as the microscopic, for explain nature in a purely “materialistic” manner. That is why I dare advance the notion of spirit as the link and motor of what happens in the universe, and to explain the still unexplained grandeur of it.

 

I believe that Teilhard de Chardin, with the concept of the noosphere, a space around the earth where human thought is spread and concentrated, was a pioneer in this way of associating spirit with the scientific approach. But why limit the noosphere to only the earth, and not beyond? Why this sort of funnel toward the point he calls Omega, toward which all the universal future converges? Why, on the contrary, not see the noosphere evolve with the expansion of the universe? That would make it divergent, open, aborescent: all thinking creatures would continue to develop and to evolve quite naturally into a profusion of possibilities that would be unceasingly actualized. And “naturally” would mean “without any intent on the part of anyone” …

 

I am only a week away from the conclusion of my pilgrimage. One face of the statue is unveiled with the expression “God saveguides” which up to now has truly left me whole and has patiently and gently inspired me. With such a God, all the potentiality of an open future is revealed before me in leaving a great freedom to confer sense to my life, as long as I conform to the harmony of its self-fulfillment. Nonetheless there remains the fact that this term is undoubtedly always quite timid. It is far from being the lively ardor of the one used in the gospel of John under the name of logos, translated with difficulty by the word Verb. I have 7 more stages in which to compare these terms and perhaps better decide to “Whom” I can truly pray!

 

tinerary from León to Triacastela (11th week)