A Rhetorical Answer

A Rhetorical Answer

There is a terminal illness in our family – that is a fact we have to come to terms with. In the bewilderment of this, anger was expressed and the rhetorical question was posed “where is God in all this?”
Here is my answer which is directed at myself…

I’ve been puzzling over this for a long time and have had to try and find my own answer. At the age of 51 – I’m trying to make my best attempt. I do not like to use the word god, but I will try in order to try and pin down a few thoughts that have kept me awake from the early hours this morning.

To my mind God is powerless – as much and no more than you and me.
God is not a benign magician- if you think it is – then you will suffer terrible disappointments and you will get angry, so to me this concept holds neither answers, nor solace.

I think I find my answer in the acceptance of ‘it is what it is’, things are what they are and maybe that is God.

Nothing is outside the picture – growth and decay, health and illness, loss and gain, positive and negative… Maybe that’s starting to sound like yin and yang – and maybe it is, I’m not sure, but I suppose I find that in that concept I find very little, if nothing, to disagree with.
It is in a new snowdrop and a falling leaf. In a blinding sunrise and a falling tower block. It is to be found in a blade of grass pushing up through the tarmac as much as it is to be found in the multiplication and division of cells. In the thrill of an accelerating sports car and in thundering drums. A continuum of positives and negatives.

It’s a scary thought, that life is that brutal, but accepting that all these things exist and are what they are, is a way I have found to be at peace.

Given the fact that in our capacity to act , being alive, we have a choice – we only have to decide which team to bat for. It’s a no-brainer – Be positive, march forward, carrying the flag.

In Living is a chance to see and experience and affect the picture, in Dying is the experience of becoming the picture. Somewhere among the laws of thermodynamics is the idea that energy cannot be destroyed – it can only be transformed from one form to another. That is one of the best religious ideas I have come across.

So the way to God is behind the wheel of a Jaguar as much as it is in a pair of sandals.
From one point of reference my relative is in a period of accelerated change – from another he is moving no faster than any of us and another he is coming to a standstill…. Just as from one point of view if he was speeding along the motorway you could say he was moving much faster than I was climbing a hill; but from another I would be moving much faster, but in a vertical direction. There are an infinite number of directions.

We are all spinning around the sun at exactly the same rate. Going nowhere and going everywhere.

If that sounds like an ‘anything goes’ kind of philosophy, well it is, it’s exactly that.

Our family’s world will not be the same without him, but the Universe will be no different.