Over the weekend, my eighteen year old niece contacted me to ask me a bunch of questions for an AWANA project.  I found the questions interesting, if a little simplistic (and maybe slanted), but I did the best I could to give her short, somewhat simplified answers.  I’ve decided to take at least some of the questions and turn each one into a blog post, where I can explore the thoughts that the question brought up for me in a bit more depth.

Where did you come from?

When I answered this question, I stick with the simple and “mundane” answer of where I was born.  However, I got the impression that there’s a greater metaphysical intent behind the question.  And that’s what I’d like to explore more in this entry, as for me, answering it involves considering the nature of existence, the universe, and the Divine.

I tend to be a pantheist, in that I believe that the Divine is immanent in all things.  To put it more succinctly, I think the universe and the divine is one and the same, and that the various “things” — whether we’re talking about particles of dust or human beings — are a part of that Divine.

To me, the Divine and therefore the universe is driven by the dual principles of being and changing.  From the gigantic cosmic explosion that got the ball rolling to everything, the Divine Universe has sought to grow, expand, and recreate itself.  It’s that impulse to become that spawned the astronomical bodies, the rocks, the plants, and little old me.

So where did I come from?  The Divine Universe.  But that implies that I am separate from it.  I am not.  I am still a part of that greater whole.  I occupy another series of moments in that great history of the Divine Universe’s self-creation.  I am a part of that process that continues to this very day.  However small, my actions will help lay the next layer upon which successive efforts in that ongoing self-creation continues.

May what I help create be filled with beauty and other virtues.