The Magic Of Being (Thoughts On The God Question)

What is this existence all about? This is not an original question. It has exercised the minds of people since the beginning of time. In this talk on the Magic of Being, reflections are simply offered for your consideration. There are as many views about this as there are people on the planet. And that a good thing. It adds to the wonder of it all and we all benefit from thinking of these things from time to time. Asking these questions is fundamental to our humanity.

Transcript

Dear friends,

During the live session a little while ago someone asked me to give them an idea of what my thoughts were in regard to God and that's what's given rise to this the magic of being.

We have it on good advice that you don't have to believe anything without questioning.

The Buddha himself is quoted as saying,

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it,

Simply because it is spoken and rumored by many,

Simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in traditions because they've been handed down for many generations.

But after careful observation and analysis when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all then accept it and live up to it.

I'm sure there are as many opinions as there are people listening to this and that is a good thing,

Something to be celebrated rather than feared.

So when we come today to reflect on the magic of being the idea of God is too big to be captured in a three-letter word,

Even too big to be captured in all the textbooks that have ever been written.

So what are we to make of it all,

This magical existence of ours?

It's a constant source of fascination to me that you and I are here sharing this experience.

We have to ask ourselves just how can this be so?

How can it be that you and I are here sharing this journey of life?

We look around and what do we see?

We see a fascinating world of wonder,

The amazing natural world which we can now examine in extraordinary detail with the aid of powerful telescopes and electron microscopes.

You and I were given an extraordinary gift on the day we made our entrance into this world.

In his Mass on the World the French Jesuit theologian Pierre Tellard de Chardin captures something of this amazing gift when he says,

What a terrifying thing it is to have been born!

To find oneself without having willed it,

Swept irrevocably along on a torrent of fearful energy.

Having been born is certainly a terrifying thing,

Finding ourselves here and finding ourselves faced with these questions.

But it is not only terrifying,

It's a wonderful thing to be here.

We open our eyes,

We look around,

In the first place we see the world of nature in all its fascinating diversity and as well we see all around us our amazing man-made creations.

What a wonderful world!

But familiar with the world of nature,

We are not alone.

But familiarity can creep in.

These wonders are so regular,

So reliable.

We can take all this for granted,

We see it every day.

It is as familiar and as taken for granted as a comfortable old t-shirt.

The result of this familiarity is that we can drift through life with our eyes oblivious to the beauty of the world.

We can sail through our days in a routine type of way with a so-what type of attitude.

But at some time hopefully all of us will stop to ask what is this all about?

This is the question that has occupied thinking people since the beginning of time.

One view is that this existence of ours is simply the result of chance.

That the world around us,

That we human beings ourselves,

Are just the result of a mindless accumulation of atoms.

We've all heard it described in this way.

This is just the way things are.

Things just evolve.

This view of reality is accompanied by the belief that science will explain it all in the end.

It's admitted that we do not have all the answers right now,

But we are assured that we will find the answers sooner or later.

Materialists tell us that we just have to dig deeper and deeper.

Not just examining what we can see with our eyes and microscopes,

But probing further and further into the subatomic world of quantum physics.

The extraordinary thing is that as the search deepens we find that the nature of reality becomes ever more mysterious,

Ever more nebulous.

We search for the final answer,

The theory of everything,

And we find ourselves opening something that resembles one of those Russian dolls.

You've seen them.

You open the outer one and find another one.

And then another inside that,

And so on and so on.

In our probing of the physical world,

Each layer that we peel back leads to another and another,

And so far without any end in sight.

The work of exploration is like peeling an onion.

You remove layer after layer,

But in this exploration you find the same layer.

You're peeling an onion.

You remove layer after layer,

But in this exploration you never manage to get to the centre.

In that materialistic view of reality the alternative possibility is to be written off as old-fashioned mumbo jumbo.

How could we rational beings possibly be expected to believe that some unseen power could be the basis of all that is?

And after all God is said by believers to be all good,

All powerful and all knowing.

And if this God is the cause or basis of everything,

Then how do we reconcile the idea of an all good,

All powerful and all knowing God with all the pain and suffering that is all too evident in the world around us?

Now it is true to say that the existence of evil is among the most difficult arguments that believers have to confront.

Of course we know that much of the suffering in the world is caused by humans.

It arises from our greed,

Our tendency to aggression,

Our desire to control other people.

That part of the evil we see in the world can be blamed on humans.

But what about natural disasters,

Illnesses and the like?

These provide difficult to answer arguments against the idea of an all wise,

All knowing and all powerful God.

And in fairness to the non-believers we have to admit that God has the most incompetent set of public relations people that anyone could possibly have employed.

For example the image of God as presented in the Old Testament is anything but attractive.

Now I am no fan of Richard Dawkins.

When he rejects the idea of God it seems to me that he is not rejecting God as much as rejecting God's messengers,

God's dreadful PR people.

He is confusing the issue and missing the point.

But his description of God in the Old Testament is spot on.

He puts it this way and I am sure many of you will have read it.

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.

Jealous and proud of it.

A petty,

Unjust,

Unforgiving,

Controlled freak.

A vindictive,

Bloodthirsty,

Evil,

And evil person.

A misogynistic,

Homophobic,

Racist,

Infanticidal,

Genocidal,

Filicidal,

Pestilential,

Megalomaniacal,

Sadomasochistic,

Capriciously malevolent bully.

You have to admire Richard Dawkins command of English.

And since the time of Jesus the Roman Catholic authorities themselves have been the most reprehensible and most powerful of all the non-believers.

And the only way to get to the bottom of this is to be a Christian.

You have to admire Richard Dawkins command of English.

And since the time of Jesus the Roman Catholic authorities themselves have failed in their task of projecting a positive image of God.

We have the Inquisition,

The Crusades,

The persecution of non-believers,

The denial of science as in the case of Galileo,

And even today the covering up of abuse in order to protect the Church.

And the continuing dominance of a celibate male clergy and a failure to accept the reality of the human condition when it comes to matters of sexuality.

With public relations staff like this is it any wonder that many people have let the baby out with the bad water.

And yet faced with the alternative,

That we live in a meaningless chaotic universe,

We do need to try to rediscover what it is that gives rise to the magic of our being.

What is the basis of this reality?

It might help first of all to take a look at ourselves,

The people making this inquiry.

We are tiny finite beings living out our short lives on a fragile rock circling a minor star in the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy.

And our galaxy is just one of thousands of millions of galaxies in the non-universe.

Imagine an ant trying to understand the complexity of a nuclear power station or trying to figure out the workings of the International Space Station.

We are little more than ants as we engage in an exploration of something far more complex than the ISS or a nuclear power station.

Far more complex than anything we can even imagine.

That image of an ant studying something beyond its ability gives us an idea of how difficult,

How impossible our task is.

Aren't we the cheeky little ants when you come to think of it?

Here we are,

Finite beings struggling to come to terms with an understanding of the infinite and the eternal and at the same time convinced that we can know it all.

But strangely the very fact that we are here attempting this study is surely one argument against the idea that we are simply a random,

Purposeless accumulation of atoms.

How could a mindless accumulation of atoms begin to make such an inquiry?

How could a mindless accumulation of atoms even come up with the questions?

Our very intelligence,

Limited as it is,

Seems to suggest the opposite.

We all know there is no smoke without fire.

Our very inquiry,

The fact that we can ask the question,

Seems to suggest that there is an underlying intelligence that supports this existence of ours.

The problem is very simple really.

The too familiar word God itself.

We are inclined to see God as a bigger,

Stronger version of ourselves.

God as Superman or Superwoman.

But just think of what an awful God that would be.

Consider for a moment what we have done to one another and the damage that we have inflicted on this planet.

Beginning with sticks and stones we've developed ever more efficient means of killing one another.

We've progressed,

Although you'd hardly call it progress,

Through bows and arrows,

Spears,

Swords,

Armour,

Guns,

Tanks and an ever more sophisticated collection of weapons.

Until now we possess the ability to destroy the planet and everything on it several times over.

Only the certainty of mutually assured destruction has progressed.

Only the certainty of mutually assured destruction has prevented us so far from pressing the nuclear buttons that could end life for all of us humans as well as every living thing on this earth.

And when you consider what we have done to this planet,

How we have exploited it,

Plundered its resources,

Overheated it to the point of near calamity,

You would have to despair at the prospect of a bigger,

More powerful version of ourselves being in charge of this world.

Even now,

When we are faced with flashing red lights and clear evidence that climate change is threatening the future of civilization,

We are reluctant to take the steps that are needed to avert the looming calamity.

Whoever or whatever God may be,

Let us hope that he,

She or it bears very little resemblance to ourselves.

Any attempt at description of God loses sight of what God by definition must be.

The word God is a very small word and our easy use of it has given rise to believe in a very small God.

This very small God is the God that people these days cannot believe in.

How could they?

Why should they?

The book of Genesis tells us that God made humankind in his image and likeness,

That we are made in the image of God.

But we have come to believe that God is made in our image.

So when faced with the alternatives,

One,

That we are a mindless accumulation of atoms,

Or two,

That there is an impossible to define underlying reality that we inadequately refer to by the name of God,

Which is the more reasonable explanation?

Can we bring ourselves to believe in something rather than nothing as the basis for the magic of our being?

Maybe belief in God makes more sense once we don't try to bring God down to our size and once we don't limit the infinite by our definitions.

When we ask ourselves about God's existence,

We have to try to grasp an idea of existence,

Not a being,

But being itself,

Which goes beyond existence as we understand it.

When we try to think of God's presence,

We must try to imagine a presence and an intimacy which goes far beyond presence and intimacy as we experience it.

And when we talk in terms of a personal God,

What we have to try to comprehend is something that goes way beyond any idea of personal in our limited human sense.

It's the same when we talk about the love of God.

Our idea of love is so very limited.

The sometimes flippant love of one person for another,

The love of family,

The love of home,

The love of a country.

The God we are trying very inadequately to describe is present beyond any idea of presence,

Closer than any idea of closeness and by definition has to be more intimately associated with us than any idea of love and intimacy that we can conjure up.

Perhaps the most useful description we can come up with is that used by St.

Paul when he said that,

In God we live and move and have our being.

The alternative to faith in an ultimate power is the acceptance of an ultimate emptiness,

An ultimate pointlessness.

This makes for a pitiful existence that just doesn't make sense when we examine the world around us.

When all around us,

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it,

Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God.

How can it be that we are born,

That there is no meaning,

Just some temporary pain and joy between life and death,

Leaving us sad human beings trying to have a spiritual experience?

A more logical explanation might be the idea that was given to us by Tellard de Chardon who said the opposite.

He says we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

So to sum up,

If we can abandon the effort to bring God down to size,

If we can accept that God is indescribable within the limits of our thinking and our vocabulary,

If we can simply come to realise that in God we live and move and have our being,

We might find it easier to give thanks to the ground of being for the magic of our being.

A closing prayer.

Spirit of hope,

God of many names,

Source of love.

We gather with hearts heavy with grief for our suffering neighbours in all the troubled parts of the world.

We especially hold in our hearts refugees,

Our siblings in the world,

People just like us,

Escaping from terror beyond what we can begin to imagine.

May we find new ways to house the homeless,

To feed the hungry,

To welcome the stranger and not be swayed by the empty philosophy that we should look after ourselves first.

Remind us again and again that we are all neighbours on this fragile planet earth and let us treat every other person as we would wish to be treated ourselves.

Namaste.

Reviews

Thank you! I'm sitting on my porch here in Memphis Tennessee, listening to the sound of summer all around me this morning, grateful for the experience, enjoying another sit with you. Be well! Namaste

Awe inspiring!
Thanks
Here, 2 years later, this beautiful talk hits a home run!

Good session of questions. Hard to believe there is a God…hard to believe there isn’t.

This was wonderful, Tony. I’ve been having my own struggles concerning god in the midst of all the world’s troubles. This resonates. Thank you.

Amazing talk Tony. Thank you for providing us a different perspective on how we think of God. 🙏🏾

Beautiful words to live by. Thank you Tony for sharing your thoughts 🙏

Profoundly beautiful thoughts and words. Thank you Tony. You are amazing 🙏🙏

Thank you so much for this offering! It validates everything I've been thinking and questioning and have hope about God. I often find myself "acting as if," praying, "I believe; please help my unbelief," and see the miracles in the results of my prayers as practiced in the 12 Step tradition. Many blessings to you. I appreciate your wisdom and teachings. 💝🙏💝

Thank you, Tony🙏🏻🌟🙏🏻Had put this meditation aside until I could really take time to listen, and take it in. It was worth the wait. Thank you🙏🏻🌟🙏🏻
Greetings from a super hot Houston ( hello climate change deniers ?!) Hope all is well with you and your family in Dublin😇😊🤗

This is a good reminder for the sad reality of what we are doing to ourselves, to each other and to the planet. Thank you for this reminder.

Wonderful teaching and reflection, Tony! Thank you. Namaste.

Thanks Tony.

Gentle yet high level exploration for all. Please make more like this. Namaste

Lovely, as always!

I love this man and his thoughts. I pray the world could be filled with more people like him.

Thank you Tony for your wisdom!!❤️🙏

What a wonderful talk. You always give such profound and considered information. Thank you again Tony 💓

Dear Tony,like always your soft tone and enlightening words are a beacon of light to us all.
Love u, dear friend. Thanking God for you,always. Namaste
🙏👼🌻🌺🕊🙌

Awesome! Loved the final prayer!
Our cruise was in Dublin for 1 day - saw Powerscourt in Wicklow & Christ Church-
Great to be in your city Tony
☘️🍀🍀☘️

Beautiful 🌟

D E E P
Really question how and why the way we hold fast to certain beliefs and our reaction to them.

This is CERTAINLY worthy of a listen .

I highly recommend.