A Quantum Journey Towards God 12-22-9

Gravatt Conference Center, South Carolina

A hundred years into the search for the grand unified field of the universe that transcends the four known forces, quantum mechanics is able to safely say “nothing is as it seems.” A few of those gifted individuals in the world with the capacity to understand the requisite mathematics are suggesting the only thing that makes sense is a universe with ten dimensions. The only thing that makes sense to the rest of us Newtonian types is a three-dimensional universe, perhaps with time being called a forth dimension. In one of the classic early quantum physical experiments, it was proven that a single photon could go through two side-by-side apertures at the same time. This is absolutely counterintuitive to our three dimensional experience.

While physicists attempt to make sense of the universe, some of us are trying to make sense of God and His relationship to humankind. Countless spiritual traditions of every kind for some sixty centuries or more claim to have found some sort of unifying theological precept to explain the nature of God – The Way. What we are finding from both the spiritual and physical domains is a growing awareness that nothing is as it seems. There is a growing mutual respect for both domains, to the degree that I have a thousand-page mathematical text produced by a particle physicist that claims to mathematically prove the existence of God. It is now a substantial number of physicists who claim to have found God at the far end of their experiments.

The Cursillo spiritual retreat experience is an aperture through which fortunate individuals are able to pass while on their search for deeper understanding. As one who has had the good fortune to pass through this luminous aperture, I learned that even down here in our three simple dimensions, things are not as they seem. Like most other Cursillistas, my photons of expectation proved to be disrupted, both positively and negatively during the time/space continuum of the first three days of spiritual exploration. Fabulous elements of visual surprise cast each of us into a higher state of Numinous wonder. For some of us with critical spirits and rigid thinking, some of the structures of the Cursillo aperture were discomfiting, to say the least. Several times I was ready to abandon the experiment and go back to my old Newtonian ways of life. Just in time, the One who was really running the experiments, and is Himself outside of time, injected His Love into my tiny bit of the universe. I stayed for the duration of the experiment.

It was during the Closura ceremony at the end of the retreat that I was compelled to make the hardest journey of my life, to stand before all present and admit that things were not at all as they had seemed to me. I had been so absolutely positive about the nature of things around me. It is exceedingly difficult to admit to hundreds that one really is, in fact, clueless. The reality is that God has a better idea than I about anything, especially those things at variance with my expectations. I only wish the Cursillo experience was like the early quantum experiments in that I could go through it again for the first time, with a different attitude.

The take-home message of the Cursillo experiment is that God’s Love is indeed the unifying force of the universe. In fact, I was just given a pre-publication manuscript of a serious work called Grace: The Fifth Fundamental Force of Nature to review. We simply have to trust this Love and have faith that the Creator of the known and unknown universe has our best interests at heart, especially during those times when the star in our sky has gone super nova and collapsed into a black hole, leaving us in apparent total darkness. It is in the dark times we are at risk of forgetting His Love. It is in these times we have to fly by faith. After all, He tells us in the sacred writings that “eyes have not seen, ears have not heard, and the hearts of man have not even imagined the things I have prepared for you.”

Here on the backside of the aperture of Cursillo, I find the universe continuously defying my expectations everyday. The folds and hairpins in daily life can be more challenging than the most extreme of amusement park rides. Since my recent Cursillo, I have stood at three open caskets, and said the final farewell to three of our fellow travellers. Since then, financial markets around the world have in some cases lost 75% of their value. Since my Cursillo, yet another war has been added to the litany of violence than spans the human experiment. In a few weeks, I will have to trust pilots, security personnel, and hundreds of other strangers to carry me safely halfway around a world at war. What Cursillo does is remind us that there is a greater force than death, war, or even our own insecurities, expectations and critical attitudes.

It is out here in the daily world of chaos that we really do have the opportunity to demonstrate this greater force of God’s love and grace to those who are struggling to find their way home in an often very scary universe. Each day we are free to inject acts of love and kindness into the aperture of the lives around us. They really need it, almost as much as we need to give it.