14 Years Ago Next Week: Monday Musings

I took this photo in the gardens
of the Rodin Museum in Paris
on April 27, 2016

By Moristotle

[Originally published on January 29, 2007, without an image.]

The other day I had occasion to share with someone something that I have thought for many years:

God [if God exists] can communicate with us any damn way God pleases [that is, through the Bible, the Quran..., the angelic kindness of a stranger...]

    This morning as I was about to enter the allergy clinic for my bimonthly antigen injection, a vibrant, dark-skinned young nurse called out to me from down the hall, “Hi! What’s your name?”
    “[Moristotle]...What’s yours?”
    “Eloise!”
    We approached, took each other’s hand, and shook firmly, smiling at each other with a kind of recognition. I continued to hold her hand while saying, “Something seems to have happened to you this morning. Did you have an angelic visitation, or perhaps a revelation from God directly?”
    Eloise was now beaming even more brightly. “I had a great session this morning with my prayer partner.”
    “Aha!” I said. “Good on you!”
    This proof that indeed “something had happened” to this young stranger relieved me of the possible impertinence of my opening remarks to her. And it seemed that something had just happened to me too. A few minutes later, as I was sitting in a clinic waiting room, my muse began whispering to me, rather urgently. I quickly found a piece of paper and borrowed a pencil. I took some dictation:

God is the answer to certain questions we ask:

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
“How is it possible that we ask and thereby receive?”
“Why does the sun shine on the just and the unjust alike?”
“Why are innocent animals devoured in the mechanism of the food chain?”
Etc., etc.

How can we identify questions to which God is the answer? Or, What are the criteria for such questions?
    What if such a question has no answer; does that mean there is no God?
    Some of these questions may be answerable by science. If they can be, are they therefore disqualified? Or, is “can’t be answered by science” one of the criteria? If so, then why? [My muse seemed to be reflecting Maliha’s comment of yesterday:

I always wondered why there was such a disconnect between Science and Religion. Why does it have to be either Science OR God? I...understand God more through Science (precision, beauty, perfection, symmetry, etc.). And Science has an added layer of meaning when looking at it through the prism of a gnostic.

For more of Maliha’s comment, plus previous whisperings from my muse, see yesterday’s “Open Letter to Maliha on Agnosticism.”^*]

More things to think on. Thank you, my muse.
_______________
* One paragraph from that open letter to Maliha:

Well, within about one hour my muse was already starting to whisper to me, urgently, while I was driving home after doing an errand. Already, while driving out of my yard to go do the errand, I had been thinking that if an agnostic is not committed to anything, then the term hardly seems to apply to me. I feel committed. I am passionate about responding impeccably to life, to “the human condition.” I have never been a couch potato, a spectator, a blindly following dogmatist. I have tried to engage life, to have passed this way not in vain.

Copyright © 2007 & 2021 by Moristotle