A Pastor and Amateur Physicist's Prayer on Father's Day
I love the Catholics. The longer I live the more I see the gentle directive hand of God in the events of my life, ever so gently and kindly leading me by a subtle arranging of circumstance to bring me to where I am now.
And so I think it not mere happenstance that I would have attended a Catholic high school, administered by the good Oblates of St. Francis de Sales, nor was it unplanned that I would attend a Catholic University for my undergraduate education, and then again a decade later for graduate studies.
Now my studies in physics and cosmology keep returning me to the works of Dr. Stanley Jaki, priest, physicist and winner of the Templeton Prize, who brings science back into contingency on the Creator and to the solidarity of the faith and hopes of all humanity.
I love the Catholics for so many reasons, and the most recent reason is for their beautiful expression "Father God."
I know that the Catholics have been criticized over their reverence for Mary and for their commitment to social justice. I am beginning to suspect that their love for Mary and their love for the downtrodden might best be summed up in the phrase "Father God and mother earth."
So great is their love for the Father, that they also love His creation--and if this sweet and reverential love is at times a bit over-emotional, it is because they, like all of us, are all too human.
As I sit writing this and as you sit reading it, you feel gravity pushing you upon your seat, and if you were to stand back mentally for a moment, and listen for the sound of birds singing, you might become aware of the passage of time.
Your soul is aware of the passage of time because the soul is of the timeless realm, and in relation to the stillness of the timeless realm you are aware of the movement of time in comparison.
This gravity and this time is how we sense the mother field, the timeless omnidirectional wind in which we live and move and have our being. Our physical being is bathed and held in the gravity field (not a property of matter, but of the compressing waves enveloping it in the mother field), and time is the primal movement in which we may grow, mature and develop character.
Timelessness begets time, and time begets energy and matter; and matter lags in the time stream, creating waves, like a canoe being pushed in a moving stream. The dual waves, some enveloping the canoe and those moving outward from the canoe are the gravity. And as the stream moves on beyond the canoe, you have time and space.
Father God has given us mother earth, the creative field which nurtures our physical being. And for this we are grateful.
On this Father's Day, I would like to acknowledge and honor Father God.
O heavenly Father, You have filled the
world with beauty, and provided for us in
abundance. Open our eyes to behold Your
gracious hand in all Your works; that rejoicing
in Your whole creation, we may learn to
serve You will gladness.
The Book of Common Prayer,
Prayers for the World,
for joy in God's Creation
