God Godding
“I have great respect for the scientific method, but I’ll put my faith every time in those who sing me to sleep with poems.” Burt Kempner
Pinhead Angel
By Burt Kempner
GAINESVILLE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—2/25/2013—Is God a Being or a State of Being? Many who have undergone Near Death Experiences (NDEs) claim it’s the latter. They say their temporary excursions into the afterlife prove that all existence is an eternal continuum, with past, present and future being artificial constructs. They say they were able to see with 360-degree peripheral vision, were suffused with unconditional love, and knew beyond question that every living and non-living being is part of an indivisible One.
A wonderful Kabbalah teacher taught me that this never-ending cycle of creation and expansion is an example of God Godding. God, some Kabbalists declare, is not a noun but a verb.
When seen from above, the Ocean contains billions of waves. They are made of the same substance as Ocean, but they are not Ocean. Similarly, we are composed of Spirit, but we are not God. But we are better, stronger, nobler and vastly more lovable than we can possibly know until, through a life-changing event, we see it writ plain.
Scientists dismiss NDEs as a by-product of anoxia, i.e., a mounting lack of oxygen to the brain as it shuts down. As parting gifts go, this is not chopped liver. So who’s right, the mystics or the materialists? I have great respect for the scientific method, but I’ll put my faith every time in those who sing me to sleep with poems.
Burt Kempner
Burt Kempner has worked as a scriptwriter in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Florida. His work has won numerous major awards, and has been seen by groups ranging in size from a national television audience in the United States to a half-dozen Maori chieftains in New Zealand. His documentaries have appeared on PBS, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, CNBC, and European and Asian TV networks. He has two dogs, a cat, a wife and a son and is randomly kind to them all. More recently, Kempner has written three rather subversive books for children: Larry the Lazy Blue Whale, Monty the Movie Star Moose and The Five Fierce Tigers of Rosa Martinez. Visit his Amazon author page: amazon.com/author/burtkempner
3 Comments
Linda Seidel
Wonderful piece Burt! TY. And I go with the Mystics, and as a young nun we were taught that even the Jews realized that whatever the mystery of life could not be named thus Yahweh…that which cannot be named! I believe energy is energy and transforms over and over. I may be a part of a STAR in my reincarnation! ( G )
Sincerely and with admiration of you and your work!
Linda
Rick Boling
Being of a scientific bent, I tend to lean towards the brain chemistry theory. However, I also must be somewhat agnostic about the whole thing, since I cannot say that anything is for sure anymore (and that includes the supposed inevitability of death and taxes). Though I haven’t lost my faith in science, I have to say that postulations like the nine dimensions of string theory and the concept of quantum mechanics are far more poetic than logical.
Regardless of whether or not we live on as individual “souls,” we will live on as part of the elemental cosmic dance; which also, if I may quote, “is not chopped liver.” As insignificant as one human being is in the vastness of the universe, the transformation from a warm-blooded, physical entity to a few billion smaller elements swirling in the vastness of the space-time continuum is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Although, seen from the proper vantage point, it would probably seem quite poetic. Call it the music of the spheres.
As a lowly patent clerk once said, “Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player.”
Burt Kempner
Thanks, Linda and Rick. I continually and delightedly learn from you both.