Time, a roll of toilet paper, a paint brush stroke
Thursday, March 04, 2010
I want to thank everyone who weighed in on the last blog. If you have not checked out the somewhat polarizing topic and the insightful comments that followed, please do.
Time. What a loaded term to ponder. Everything we do is marked by time. Time rules our lives, yet our concept of time is painfully limited. The universe was born some 14 billion years ago. Our solar system and planet Earth formed an estimated 4.6 billion years ago. The first dinosaurs appeared on Earth around 230 million years ago and reigned until about 65 million years ago, dominating the planet for 165 million years. The first human beings… Well, let’s use a prop taken from a Standard Deviants video our sons play over and over to illustrate this one. The toilet paper roll.
Roll one of those large toilet paper rolls completely out on the floor. You may need to do this outside to get the full effect. The last square and a half or two of that roll is the life and times of the dinosaurs. To mark our time in this enormous unfurled space you must tear off a tiny, almost unobservable, piece at the very end.
The idea of evolution is obviously rooted in change over time. It is important to remember this is virtually an unobservable amount of time when we appreciate the big toilet paper picture. I am not an archeologist, geologist, paleontologist, or cosmologist although I am fascinated with them all. I certainly do not want to argue about the specifics of a million years here or even a billion years there. What I think is interesting is the discussion of evolution which polarizes so many is really fueled by our limited concept of time. Scientists and theologians over the centuries have scraped and clawed and burned people at the stake over the “truth” of our place as human beings in space and time. As we re-discover more and more about our universe we are challenged with the concept of the relativity of space and time. We are now forced to face how meaningless this argument may be. Appreciation of these mind-blowing concepts should ground us in a feeling of overwhelming unity. I believe God would be in favor of this.
Time can only be marked by the relationship of two things in space. This relationship produces what we perceive as an event. Our universe, brought forth out of nothing, created time and is continuing to expand through space. The transcendent Artist of this masterpiece continues His brush stroke across the canvas. Time as we conceive it becomes meaningless in the wake of this unimaginable and transcendent creative movement. A movement we are free to dance within because of our opportunity for conscious connection with the Creator. Evolution is simply a human concept grasping for stability as we ride this unimaginable wave of creative movement. The use of this term makes it no less Divine.
As we humbly crawl for about 50-70 years upon this spinning rock that orbits our sun, which is one of the estimated 300 billion stars making up our Milky Way galaxy, which is one of the estimated 300 billion galaxies constituting the universe, we must accept our blessed lives are but a firefly’s flicker. I glance down at my iPhone one more time so that I am on time for an ALS patient facing the end of his time, and I realize my life is no more than a heartbeat of God. All I can hope for during my flicker of a lifetime is that I made Him giggle.
Thank you for entertaining my fascination for this topic. I love to hear your thoughts. Michele
Time. What a loaded term to ponder. Everything we do is marked by time. Time rules our lives, yet our concept of time is painfully limited. The universe was born some 14 billion years ago. Our solar system and planet Earth formed an estimated 4.6 billion years ago. The first dinosaurs appeared on Earth around 230 million years ago and reigned until about 65 million years ago, dominating the planet for 165 million years. The first human beings… Well, let’s use a prop taken from a Standard Deviants video our sons play over and over to illustrate this one. The toilet paper roll.
The idea of evolution is obviously rooted in change over time. It is important to remember this is virtually an unobservable amount of time when we appreciate the big toilet paper picture. I am not an archeologist, geologist, paleontologist, or cosmologist although I am fascinated with them all. I certainly do not want to argue about the specifics of a million years here or even a billion years there. What I think is interesting is the discussion of evolution which polarizes so many is really fueled by our limited concept of time. Scientists and theologians over the centuries have scraped and clawed and burned people at the stake over the “truth” of our place as human beings in space and time. As we re-discover more and more about our universe we are challenged with the concept of the relativity of space and time. We are now forced to face how meaningless this argument may be. Appreciation of these mind-blowing concepts should ground us in a feeling of overwhelming unity. I believe God would be in favor of this.
Thank you for entertaining my fascination for this topic. I love to hear your thoughts. Michele
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