“I’m not saying that God is all things or that all things are God (pantheism). I am saying that each living thing reveals some aspect of God. God is greater than the whole of our universe, and as Creator, inter-penetrates all created things (panentheism).”

—Fr Rohr

Helder was a man connected at his center like a 14 bn-year-old umbilical cord to the created order and the interconnectedness of all things. As a young man, Helder would spend nights and a day’s journey in the wilderness, cold and immersed in the stars and other creatures. He puzzled how anyone claiming no connection to Her wilderness could claim to be in a relationship with the Creator, like claiming to know someone you have never met. As the man said, “Creation is Her original testament.” To be at home in Her creation is to know something of Her that is known no other way, As he aged, the wilderness had sadly become more painful for him to experience. Not that it stopped him, jus’ slowed him down. As he said, “it’s only pain.”

This evening, three spotted fawns are frolicking in the meadow. They seemed to play a version of tag, chasing and then being chased, all ears and white flag tails straight up. Flashes of white enthusiasm in the twilight. Engrossed in the game, they are oblivious to our participation, unlike their mother doe nibbling at the edges of the wood. On the bench, backs leaning against the rough peeled logs of the cabin, a glass of chilled IPA in hand against the warm evening, a look of unequivocal joy on Helder’s face, he says, “Claire would Love this.”

• • •

I slipped out from under our down comforter and two wollen blankets and arose this morning before Helder. Stoked the morning fire in the wood stove, made coffee, and sat on a wooden three-legged stool-warm enameled steel cup in my two hands to peruse the volumes in Helder’s lending library, which all but covered the entire North wall of his one-room cabin.

This was rather an unusual start to our day since Helder always rose early enough to hear the beginning of the morning song, but then, we had been up late pondering the expanse of the universe revealed against the black of the space in between the points of light, stars, and galaxies, we could see. At the first hint of coming light, the heralds of the new day, the Robins, announce the call to adoration, thankfulness, and worship, the celebration and gratefulness of new life, and the endless possibilities held by the persuasion of light, gently but insistently, sweeping aside the darkness.

As a sleepy-headed Helder took a seat at the table, I poured and slid across the table a matching green enameled cup of hot, welcoming, aromatic brew. As his hands embraced the welcome warmth and he took his first sip, I pointed out his collection of books about theoretical physics, anthropology, paleontology, psychology, geology, and sociology.

“I had no idea that you, a man of the cloth, also have an interest in the sciences.”

“Well, Passerby…if I believed in the transcendent patriarchal warrior god, out there somewhere, above and apart from all he had created, and now manages, an actor from outside the universe, which I don’t, I don’t suppose that I would have the interest in the sciences that I do.

However, having long ago given my ‘heart, soul, mind, and strength’ (Mk 12:28-31) to Love the Great Creator Spirit, beloved by me, who is imminent and incarnate and Loves us intimately and literally from the inside out since She is in, and has been in, all She birthed and is birthing (the universe) for the sole purpose of giving and receiving Love in return from those who will; I am endlessly fascinated. Like true religion, true science must not be an abstract speculation about the possibility of Her influence, but the experience of Her Reality.”

Earth is crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees
Takes off his shoes –
The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Passerby,
Did you know that every atom in the human body is 99 percent space? If you imagine with me that a nucleus was a medium-sized office building in Omaha, the electrons would be orbiting in New York City and LA. But that space is not empty space. They are there, the creative energy that set the universe and all of the evolutionary miracles in motion. She is all of the energy that exists. The space that is by far the greatest proportion of the entire quantum universe. Did you know that the electrons that attend and orbit every nucleus in every atom in every element of the periodic table of elements do so out of preference? The ‘strong force’ that binds the Nucleus together has no influence. There is nothing known, especially not electromagnetics, that compels them so. Did you know that quarks, one of the smallest particles (and sometimes waves) known, only travel in groups? Never alone, they prefer relationships to the isolation of individualism. The entire structure of the cosmos is about relationships. As Teilhard de Chardin said, ‘Love is the structure of the universe!” Everything in the entire universe demonstrates and endorses the yearning for intimacy with Her that She imparted to all She birthed.

• • •

Einstein believed in a single therum, yet to be discovered that would explain the behavior of and the relationships between everything in the universe, and he spent his final years searching for it.

Well, obviously, I am no Einstein, and my knowledge of theoretical physics only scratches the surface of novice; however, it seems clear to me that if a person were to accept for a moment, the premise that an unpredictably powerful, benevolent, and invested presence is the impetus behind the ‘Big Bang,’ or ‘Great Flaring Forth,’ as Brian Swimme prefers, and, so invested, has always been the ‘kick in the seat of the pants’ at significant evolutionary impasses, many of the questions being asked by honest theoretical physics, would find their answers.

• • •

Passerby, It’s still early. Let’s quietly stroll through the woods to the pond, find a comfy seat against a tree, and see who might be stopping by. I’ll bring my camera.