Of What Am I Made?

This would seem to be the easiest question I have posed for these blogs. I am made of atoms and molecules. I am ¾ water. I am flesh and blood and bone. My physical characteristics are determined by the DNA I inherited from my parents and their progenitors. But, as it turns out, that is the easiest part of the question to answer.

The harder question to ponder is my conscious awareness. Why does it persist? Why am I the same essential person when I awaken each morning – yet a different person than I was ten years ago? How do events shape my being? And why does the same event affect individuals so differently? In other words, why do some run towards the catastrophe while most run away?

Humanity, especially in the western first world, prides itself on being able to untangle the most Gordian of knots, but the origin and persistence of human consciousness continues to elude our finest minds.

I have my own theory, of course. It is borne of years of study, but study only illuminates my own experience. I have no proof, so I only offer it here as food for your own thoughts and exploration.

It seems to me we are indeed physical beings designed to house an eternal spark of God’s Beingness (which I pondered in my second blog). We are not God ourselves; we are merely one unique manifestation of that spark. That means that the eternal energy is alive within us, constantly inviting us to live into the fullness of that spark of Beingness.

I think it takes a great deal of energy for that spark of Beingness to hold our physical shapes. This is why we are subject to illness, disease, and death. This is why children, whose consciousness holds smaller shapes and has done so for less time, have so much more energy than most adults.

And I think that, to the extent we ourselves choose to explore it, our conscious selves are capable of being so much more: kinder, with more moral strength, more resilient, more prone to humor and laughter, more forgiving.

We are stronger and more powerful than we realize, but we don’t have to live into that power. We can live as small a life as we wish, and God will still love us. But somewhere within each of us is a song that haunts our dreams and whispers of a love and life of joy and happiness that waits for us – somewhere.

That inner song is, I think, the origin of the world’s religions. Humanity may have imposed layers of falsehood upon the melody, but it lingers in the heart of every human being where it murmurs and cannot be stilled.

Whenever I preach, I pray that I echo that song, and make it stir with just a little more vigor within all who hear me. My song calls to yours, and God is singing them both.

At least, that’s a bit of who I think we are.

Pastor Vivian, Executive Pastor