Ripples in the Water

Dear Eugene,

True theology looks like cathedral but sounds like lullaby.  (I can see you grinning already.)

Actually I think any observation of truth more than skin-deep has the same quality.  I am thinking about literature and science, cinema and politics.

I like to look at ripples in the water.

On the ferry sometimes I would ask if one day mathematician can come up with a formula to account for the past and future journey of every ripple that has ever crossed path with another since the beginning of time and unto the end of (as we know) it.



Other times I would think about Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Three Times," with the song "Rain and Tears" playing in my head, sometimes seeing myself as the boy character looking this way, sometimes as the girl looking the other way, always with the ripples keep coming together and breaking apart beneath me.

Yet other times I couldn't escape that the phrase "ripples-in-the-water" also means "life goes on," that what happened in the past is now history, and maybe the future will be just as trivial and uneventful.  Maybe I shouldn't worry.  Maybe I should worry more.

I was reading Genesis yesterday and arrested by two verses:

Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beer-sheba, and called there on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God. (21:33)

 So Abraham called that place “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” (22:14)

Abraham was an ancient Near East man.  In his polytheistic days, "big," national deities would take care of things of cosmic concern, long-term stuffs with widespread repercussion--big ripples, if you will.  Then there were also little, patron "gods" that one could adopt, acquire for his own family, village, city to specialize in taking care of daily matters in the life of the individual, small ripples, finding a parking spot at Costco, praying for the price-drop of a camera that you really want, trying to mend a bleeding toe with nail cut a millimeter too deep.

So this "new" God confounded Abraham.  The first verse indicates he "discovered" that this "God" who took care of him was a cosmic, big-ripple God.  Yet, as read in the second verse, he then also found out this same God was a "God of small things."

Abraham was arrested by the apparent contradiction, no doubt, and he wrestled with it all his life.

Isn't this what true theology should do to us?

“Maybe it's all utterly meaningless. Maybe it's all unutterably meaningful. If you want to know which, pay attention to what it means to be truly human in a world that half the time we're in love with and half the time scares the hell out of us. Any fiction that helps us pay attention to that is religious fiction. The unexpected sound of your name on somebody's lips. The good dream. The strange coincidence. The moment that brings tears to your eyes. The person who brings life to your life. Even the smallest events hold the greatest clues.”

Yours, often confused, Alex

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