If you could be, have or create anything, what would it be? Now imagine … beyond nature and physics … beyond reality and experience … What would you do? Do you wish for Midas’ touch? Would you seek immortality? Traverse space or time? Create a new universe and call yourself king or queen? Paradoxically, we know what God would do as he did it. He created a beautiful, habitable planet hurtling through dark desolation. Here, the life-giving passion of Love is more adamant, fierce and intense, than its great opposite, Death. Against a backdrop of inhospitable space, he created beauty and laughter, friendship and hope to stimulate reflection beyond the 92 chemical elements that emerged from stardust to constitute matter. The Creator determined that both the atomic particles, shared by all creatures, and the genetic code, established for growth, should reveal something astounding about his design and the fulfillment of his vision.
Filled with beauty and possibility, this planet could have been perfect, but God decided it should be otherwise. He could have created excellence, but that doesn’t required evolution. He could have removed chaos and suffering, but he knew better than that. The truth is, nothing good is achieved without effort and striving. Every element in this world needs to overcome the barriers that divide them. Every human being must seek perfection by first establishing strong and vital bonds with others; thus, friendships are struck, families start and history gradually unfolds in a way we could never conceive. If the distress of its opposite didn’t exist, happiness would mean nothing. Without delicate discovery and precious progression, love would mean nothing. And so, no light was as dazzling as the one that swept away primordial darkness. Honestly, would man fully treasure life and its gifts, without being confounded by the permanence of its eventual loss?
Pity the crabs I saw struggling to escape from a bucket, at a seafood restaurant down the road. When one clambered over some to reach the edge, others grabbed it back and pulled it down, so that none reached freedom. Pity the crabs that struggle with each other, despite having four legs to advance and four legs to pull others up. Why is there suffering? Why is there war? Why are entire economies collapsing like dominos? Why do the gifted declining their responsibility towards the suffering? On a certain horizon of understanding, human beings behave like crabs, in a bucket that is twelve thousand kilometers wide and also offers no freedom outside it. Pity the crabs who don’t know any better than stepping over each other in a frenzy that guarantees collective demise. But, shame on those who should know better than scrambling the heights of greed, power and lust, whilst trampling underfoot the fulfillment of a greater vision.
From the book of Sirach: “The Lord created human beings out of earth, and makes them return to it again. He gave them a fixed number of days, but granted them authority over everything on the earth. He endowed them with strength like his own, and made them in his own image. Discretion and tongue and eyes, ears and a mind for thinking he gave them. He filled them with knowledge and understanding, and showed them good and evil. He put the fear of him into their hearts to show them the majesty of his works. And they will praise his holy name, to proclaim the grandeur of his works. He bestowed knowledge upon them, and allotted to them the law of life. He established with them an eternal covenant, and revealed to them his decrees. Their eyes saw his glorious majesty, and their ears heard the glory of his voice. He said to them, ‘Beware of all evil.’ And he gave commandment to each of them concerning neighbours. Their ways are always known to him; they will not be hidden from his eyes.”
