The following essay is fairly difficult, but I have been thinking about these things lately and decided to post my ideas. I hope I don't drive people away.

God and Time

Time moves, and infinity does not. Time begins, ends, and changes. Infinity is static because movement implies time. The cosmos is thought to be finite. We have not reached the end of what exists in time, but there is, in theory, an end. Planets, stars, constellations, and dark matter exist in time and are therefore, finite. Time is countable. The cosmos began at some moment, and at some moment will cease to be. In theory, we could find the end of what we know to exist. The question that rises is, "What is outside time. When the cosmos ends, what is there?" The question is a strange one. In one's mind, one comes to the farthest part of the universe, and we find what? Whatever is out there beyond time and what we know to exist is infinite. Physicists have wondered and suggested maybe outside time there is nothing at all. Not an absence, like a vacuum, but infinite nothing. Time arises out of infinity and will go back to infinity. Infinity is unchangeable, the everlasting now. Change implies time and finitude. Infinity does not change. It cannot because change implies the end of something and the beginning of something else, movement. Beginning and ending happen in time, and time is finite. Life as we know it is finite. It begins at a point in time, and ends at another point.
There are two possibilities regarding the infinite. Something is there or nothing. If nothing is outside time, then in theory, we could come to the end of the cosmos and stop. There is nothing else. The cosmos will end, but outside the cosmos there is nothing at all, and nothing is infinite. It neither begins nor ends. The other possibility is that there is an infinite something outside time.
Consciouness exists in time. There are days, months, years, and eons, but they are countable, and they begin at some point and end at some other. Consciousness moves and is aware of itself. Human consciousness begins at some point in development and ends at another. The subconscious knows nothing of time. It has only the never ending now. It does not count and does not move and does not know that it can end. If something exists outside of time, we can calll it God and posit that God is subconscious. God is infinite, eternal, and exists in the never ending now. I have spent years of my life uninterested in the existence of God. I can neither prove that It exists or does not exist. I can find no terms on which I can determine one or the other. However, if the infinity outside the cosmos is not nothing, we can call the infinite subconscious outside of time "God" and then think about what qualities such a being might have.
Time and finitude rise out of eternity and will sink back into it. If the eternity outside the cosmos is defined as God, then we can maybe say some things about It. It is not conscious, but subconscious, but the conscious mind rises out of the unconscious which rises out of the subconscious. Animals exist whose minds are probably no more than subconscious. They are entirely instinctive and decide nothing. Alligators come to mind. One can move and alligator from one swamp to another, and if its needs are met, it is fine. No alligator needs time adjust to change as far as I know. Many animals probably have nearly no conscious minds, but functioning unconscious minds, for instance cats. They don't think, but they do learn. They are very instinctive animals with some ability to synthesize and act according to new information. However, they do not communicate much in any sort of conscious sense. A cat does know when it's time to eat. They exist in time, but are nearly without consciousness. Conscious animals manipulate the environment. Whales are social.They have communication systems about which we know almost nothing. They could be very complex. And they do manipulate the environment. Whales have been trained to play ball and perfom for rewards. If consciousness rises out of the unconscious which is in time, and the unconscious rises out of the subconscious which exists outside of time, then reasonably an infinite existence outside of time would be subconscious. The infinite subconscious could occasionally exist in time and give rise to unconscious and conscious life in time and therefore begin at a given point and sink back into infinity at another point. A subconscious God could in fact give rise to a mortal Son in time who gives his life in empathy for the agony of mortal beings. One of the most ancient and important questions in human life is the problem of evil. If God is infinite, merciful, and just, how can he account for concentration camps, starvation and the other horrors of human life?
An infinite being that can rise to consciousness could have given rise for His own reasons to both time and mortality. Such a being would decide nothing about temporal affairs. He would set them in motion and they would progress according to laws of nature. Humans decide for themselves who they are and how we behave.
Sartrean existentialism states that man defines all of nature including himself. We observe whales to figure out what they are, and we can observe human behavior to understand human nature. In other words, an eternal, non conscious God exists and can rise into time to do things. It will, however, sink back into unchangeable eternity. Humans exist in time and love, suffer, give succor, or abuse each other. God simply permits us to exist. However, God can rise into consciousness and offer empathy for the sufferings of man. We can, if we choose, believe that nothing exists outside the cosmos or that an eternal infinite Being exists outside of time. We have, as far as I know, no information either way other than an apparent human need to believe. Faith is a decision, at least until we reach the end of the cosmos and find out what if anything is out there

For St Anne Patron Saint of Mothers

native stone bare against the hill
Los Angeles cool, damp
rain soaks
runs down the stairs, the hill

bright nasturtiums blow
between stones run down slopes
delicate, temporary as grass
myrtle sculpture in the kitchen window

sky bare tender blue as Jerusalem June
desert Eden
orange flowers rest gentle
between stones

children play handball against the pink wall
school starts in searing heat
backpacks tear tender shoulde
the people stand holding hoses in the dry evening
they hold those green hoses fall after fall
the children go, come back, buy homes falling down the slopes

For David the Great Warrior

the ancient desert bore heavy stones
Jacob resting for the night
placed one on another
and sacrificed to the one God

the ancient marked his path
one stone on another
for the follower
himself on return

I place one stone on another
in my green garden
nearly eternal, stones fall
my altar tumbles

David the great warrior
danced before the Lord
exposing himself
silent stones before the Lord
the Eternal spins silent unconscious
I love you

 

 

A couple of years ago, I hung a bird feeder over the deck and attracted the neighborhood sparrows. I loved wathching them in the morning. One bird would come check things out, fly away, and a flock would return to feed. They threw bird seed all over the deck and into the planter under the feeder. Then the pidgeons took over. The sparrows fought valiantly and lost. The pidgeons took over the deck, flew into my apartment to be chased out and finally brought baggage and tried to move in. One walked through the open door and tried to face down the cat. I took down the feeder, and I still miss the birds. But last spring all sorts of foreign, anonymous stuff sprang up in my planter, some of it lovely in wildfower way. I got some spontaneous sunflowers, too. The plants died and dried up and left some lovely seed pods. I took pictures. I brought some in and put them in vases along with things left over from the occasional husband bouquet. They are mostly gone now, and I have lettuce and succulents.

Algebra and the Fourth Grader

Schools across the country are introducing material earlier and earlier in some sort of race for test scores. The brain is a developing organ, and teaching Algebra in fourth grade is probably premature. Ten year old brains are not able to grasp concepts that abstract. They can memorize a+b=c, but they simply cannot understand it, much less corollaries like a-c=b. They need concrete numbers with the concepts implied. I studied algebra in high school, and it was a revelation for me. I fell in love with math. I am not a mathematician, but my understanding of abstract math concepts made my thinking richer. It might be better for young minds to study a second language.
Learning language is a skill small children are very well eqipped for. Babies unconciously learn grammar and apply it consistenly. Language expresses culture, and every culture has its own approach to the world. Children who grow up speaking two or more languages have a more complex approach to the world, and their brains approach thinking with more flexibility and complexity. There are millions of bilingual children and adults in the world, and for the most part, they are unaware of their own sopisticated views because language is an unconcious skill.
Translation is the art of making new literature out of the original. No translation is a perfect expression of the original. This fact frustrates me no end. I really would like to read Hesse's Magic Mountain in the original. The English translation is breathtaking, but I do not know what Hesse really did, and without pretty advanced German, I cannot find out.
Try this. Go to the library and take down the King James Bible and Robert Alter's translation of the Psalms from the original ancient Hebrew. Pick your second favorite Psalm and and read it in King James. Then read Alter's translation. The men who wrote the King James Bible were wonderful poets, but they did not translate from the original Hebrew. They read Hebrew, and used it for inspiration. The two pieces of literature have nearly no relationship. A child of three can unconciously know this, and his thinking is richer, but his brain is concrete, and abstract math concepts are beyond him. They are beyond the average fourth grader, too. I'm afraid we are creating a generion people seriously blocked against math. Where will we get our scientits and mathemeticians? The average fourth grader is not deeply invested in academic achievement to begin with. To teach and test her on concepts she cannot grasp creats failure and frustrated, angry teachers. The kids hate school, and the teachers don't want to teach failure.