True Light

Cherubim guarding the gates of heaven with a flaming sword.

Everything that lives on this planet requires energy. For the vast majority of all life forms on this planet, this energy enters the network of living things through light: the light of the Sun. So when we eat “our daily bread,” in a sense we are eating light. Light did the chemical work that allows our food to exist.

But in truth, all the energy we consume is the light of a dying universe. A universe that was stolen from the true Light, which is God. As the Moon is a false light that reflects light from its true light, the Sun, so all the light in this world is a false light that has been stolen from the true Light. All the creatures of this world steal the light from each other, as the light of this universe winds down. As it must wind down without renewal from the light of God.

The continuation of life in this world is based on violence and theft. Life in this world is based on sin in fact, and sin is the engine of its continuance. Plants receive light from the Sun, but they also crowd each other out as they reach for this light. They fight for the light. Herbivores steal light, or chemical energy that the light made possible, from plants. Carnivores steal this energy from herbivores. And so you see in this universe of false light, all life depends on theft, on violent appropriation of energy from others. This is why I cannot believe as some do that the world is essentially good and that people are essentially good. If the world itself is not essentially good, how can people be? And biological life in this world is based on violence and theft.

And ultimately the theft that started it all was the theft of the universe from God, who is the only true Light. I cannot pretend to know how such a theft was possible, I only know the stories. The stories tell of how an angel, Lucifer, wanted to be a god in his own right. He wanted to be lord over his own realm. As punishment for his sins he got his wish: he was cast out. He was cast here. The Universe was made for him. The fulfillment of his wish, but also a prison.

So he got a universe of his own, but from the minute he was cast into it and it was born, a clock was ticking. Because the only light he was going to have was the light that was put here to begin with, and indeed physics tells us something important along those lines which is that energy in this universe cannot be created or destroyed. It cannot be created here. So all the energy in this universe that ever would be, he brought with him. And we living things have been stealing that same light from each other ever since. Why? Our source from the true Light has been cut off. And so as the Universe itself must eventually wind down and die, so we too are condemned to die. And Satan one day will rail against the heat death of the universe and be alone forever in the ashes of the world. Alone in the absolute cold and the absolute darkness. That is his hell.

This is the Light of true life: God is the true Light.

The true light that gives life is the light from God, not the light of the Sun. True, we cannot live in this world without the latter light, but we cannot live beyond this world without the true light that is from God. The light of God is that which gives true life. We do not need to steal that light from our fellow creatures because God gives it freely to us. And so the life that is based on the Sun is a false life, a shadow of life, and the life that is based on God is true life.

Sabbath

image by J. Samuel Burner, Wikimedia Commons

You, God, are my God,

earnestly I seek you;

I thirst for you,

my whole being longs for you,

in a dry and parched land

where there is no water.

I have seen you in the sanctuary

and beheld your power and your glory.

Because your love is better than life,

my lips will glorify you.

~Psalm 63:1-3

I have taken to observing a Saturday Sabbath (or technically Friday night to Saturday night.) The reason for observing it on a Saturday is that this was the original Sabbath and there was no compelling reason to change it except for the corrupt Church wanting to cater to pagan traditions.

Why observe one at all is a different subject, and I didn't use to observe one at all until very recently. I don't interpret its observance strictly in the sense of not doing any work at all. I still water my plants and cook meals and all of that.

When I was growing up in Texas we had the Blue Laws which regulated what activities were permissible (mainly having to do with purchasing alcohol) on Sunday, and in fact when I was growing up almost everyone (in my limited social circles) had Sunday off. Of course anything that comes into conflict with the real religion of this age, consumerism and business, winds up getting crushed. I don't wish the Blue Laws would come back, mind you, and Sunday isn't my Sabbath anyway. But the idea of a day set aside among a group of believers (not by law or social custom) to worship God is very appealing, and I have derived a lot of joy from my newfound Sabbath observance.

Freed from the desire to consider myself a Christian by any even remotely conventional criteria, I find myself picking up some Jewish ways of doing things almost by instinct. A serious (though non-legalistic) observance of the Sabbath, much less a Saturday Sabbath, was never part of my world of experience before now but it just seemed to flow naturally. While I was chanting the Shema I just felt inside myself that my head should be covered when praying such a holy prayer. I bought a prayer shawl (a Jewish Tallit) and started wearing it when praying. That does not make me a Jew any more than reading the New Testament makes me a Christian. I am something else altogether, but I feel drawn to these things. The Sabbath should be special, set apart, even though I have no interest in a sort of legalistic or technical observance. My understanding of God is mystical, not algorithmic.

Because I have no co-religionists that I know of, not conforming to any tradition, I cannot celebrate the Sabbath with other people. This is a shame, as I can only imagine what a glorious thing that could be. But it is glorious any way I can observe it, in ways that I find hard to explain to other people. If observing the Sabbath alone is glorious, how much more so in a community? But as of now I have none.

The Shekhinah, the presence of God, is with his people who are observing the Sabbath. Not because of their observance of an outward law but because of their obedience to an inward love.