Last
year I bought my motorcycle. Something I’ve been yearning for almost my entire
life. Yes, it was a dream come true and oddly enough it came to fruition at the
age most men and some women experience what is known as a mid-life crisis. I
know there were rumors to the fact that I was going through this sort of trial
in my life. But I wasn’t. No, in fact I really don’t believe I will ever act in
that manner. No matter how adamant some people are and the rumors they spread.
Yes, I hear the rumors.
The
funny thing is, to me at least, is that a motorcycle is completely within my
character. After all, I’ve been riding for most of my life, I started when I
was eight. So it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I purchased
one. I mean, I have long hair, facial hair, I smoke cigars, I like rock and
roll, and I speak my mind when asked. (all of these traits have gotten me into
a pickle in one form or another over the span of my existence.)
For
me, when a person goes through a mid-life crisis they change a lot of things
about themselves. What they wear, their hair, who they hang out with and
purchase frivolities that don’t make too much sense to anyone. True, some would
say owning a motorcycle is a frivolity but I assure you, it is a much needed
part of my life. So aside from the machine that sits gleaming in my driveway, I
don’t think I acted improperly. At least on the outside.
On
the inside, there are stirrings and thoughts that won’t go ignored.
I
like reading, I like watching documentaries and I love learning new things. So
much so that my library in my house has overflowed into my office at work. (I
hide books there, don’t tell anyone.) I’ve always liked to learn things and the
subject doesn’t really matter to me too much. Of course, when I’m passionate
about a topic, well, not much on this earth can stop me from absorbing all the
information about whatever it is I want to know about.
In
school, back in the day when there was no internet, no mobile phones and definitely
no cable television, I would spend hours in the public library and school
library. So much so that most of the librarians wouldn’t even bother to have me
check out a book. They shrugged and let me walk right out the door with them.
They knew I’d be back and I’d return the tome or tomes I was absconding with.
But when I really wanted a book, which was where all information came from back
then, I’d try to save my money and purchase it. Or collect it by other means.
My
family, mainly my mother, I believe understood this about me and she singed me
up for the National Geographic Book Club. Great club. Every month or two I’d
get a new book about some exotic far off land, marine life, or various other
topics. Hell they even did one on space. I still have those books sitting
quietly in a box in my attic. I want to get them down and go through them one
day and add them to the other Nat Geo Books I’ve collected over the years and
am currently hoarding in my office. But one book, one tome, one hard covered
dead tree spoke to me the most above all the others and it’s photographs drew
me in so deep I dreamed about actually seeing the real artifacts they
displayed.
I’m
sure you’re saying to yourself right now, “What is this book? Why was it so
important and can I actually read it? The answers are simple. The book was
titled “World Religions” and I believe you can still find a copy on the
internet somewhere.
As
I stated the photographs of all the religious artifacts and places were amazing
and the theologies as explained by the writers were not dumbed down. They were
forthright and easy to read. Although, some of the reasoning behind the
religions and how they started were a bit tough for my young mind to comprehend
but I did my best. When I had questions, I went to the encyclopedias or
dictionary. I figured out what I needed to and motored on.
As
I grew older I be-bopped around to various places and wherever I went I was
subject to going to whatever faith based sanctuary the people who were housing me
went to. I didn’t have an issue with going from say Catholic to Protestant to
Methodist to Babtist or taking part in any of the creed based rituals. I went
with the flow, tried to understand what was being done and kept my faith
strong.
Yes,
I said faith. I am a believer. Which is where all this is headed.
You
see, while my lust for knowledge was and is not just faith based. I like
science and math as well. All aspects of those two subjects. So much so that
when I was a sophomore in High School I took an electronics class just to learn
how electricity works. Fascinating subject. I highly recommend you delve into
it. That’s where I learned about Tesla and Edison. Oh, and if you’re wondering,
I’m a Tesla guy.
In
that same year my science class was learning about Einstein and what he did for
the scientific community. While in History we were learning about the World
Wars. I had a killer history teacher, even back then he considered both WWI and
WWII to be almost the same war, with just a small break in-between the
fighting. Heady times for my brain. Although my grades didn’t really show I was
learning much, I was and I retained a lot of the knowledge as well and that has
served me to this day.
On
television, between Kung-Fu theatre, Westerns and Horror movies I was watching
all types of science programming. This of course was broadcast on the local PBS
station. I was also a huge fan of the “In Search of…” series with Leonard
Nimoy.
All
through those years of my life, the learning of our world, solar system, galaxy
and universe never did I question my faith. Never once did the science part of
my brain step into the faith part of my brain and vice-versa. I took things in
stride and didn’t question them. The way I figured it, the Big Bang was the
start of creation and it was just a term scientists used to coincide with the
creationist story. After all, it fits.
There
was a void, God spoke, and everything was created. BOOM!
Today
however, my brain has been doing some crazy tangential thinking. It’s kind of a
curse for me. For you see, if I don’t concentrate and keep my lizard like brain
on the more crude and human side of life, it just wanders off into one of the
many storage closets I have in my gray matter then it opens the door, pulls out
a box and opens it up and decides to play with whatever it finds.
Lately
my mind has decided to use my knowledge of science and religion like a Punch
and Judy doll. It keeps bashing them together and asking questions that humans
have been asking since the dawn of our time. So I did what any modern man would
do. I turned on my computer, went to Netflix and started watching endless hours
on religious programing (Caution, it is painful at times) as well as endless
hours of scientific programing. All of them supposedly un-biased documentaries.
(Note: I don’t think they were all un-biased. In fact I had to turn some of
them off because they were clearly an advertisement for whatever the program
was about.)
I
did manage to watch a great program, hosted by Stephen Hawking which delved
into the big bang and how it may have happened. Very interesting and extremely
persuasive in its vagueness. The gist of the film came down to this, the
universe was created before time and space. It appeared out of nothing by a
quirk that deals with sub-atomic physics. Hawking stated that since there was
no time before creation, God couldn’t have done the creating because God didn’t
exist and doesn’t exist out of time. (That is a paraphrase, don’t quote me on
it.)
Now,
for the most part, I agreed with him through the entire show. Until that last
part. Now, I’m no genius, nor do I play one in real life. But, if God does
exist and throughout the course of humanity we’ve been looking for him and can’t
find him wouldn’t you say he either has a really good hiding place or… and this
may be a stretch… couldn’t he/she exist out of time? Wouldn’t that be the best
place to hide? I mean, if I controlled everything and didn’t want to be found,
I would just zap into either a place of temporal stasis or out of the loop of
time altogether and watch the fireworks through my porthole. I know, a bit naïve
but it’s just a thought.
You
see, to me at least, I look around my yard, neighborhood, city, state, country,
world, solar system, galaxy and universe and I see a lot of order that has been
made out of chaos. A lot of things just make sense. Things work and balance out
like an amazing machine. A machine that only a great Machinist or Creator could
assemble. To think that it was ALL an accident of a stray sub-atomic particle
deciding it wanted to perform it’s best impression of a pop-corn kernel is as
preposterous to the faith community as a grand creator is to the science
community.
As
for now, yes, I’m in a bit of a mid-life-faith-crisis. But that only means I’m
more of a deist, like the great Thomas Jefferson and others than I am of a
blind sheeple walking into whatever popular religion is being taunted today. I
believe in God and Science. I believe there is a way both communities can live,
thrive and survive together especially when both sides don’t have all the
answers to all the questions. No matter how loud each side screams they do or
don’t.
Have
a great week.
