Behind the Scenes

Do you ever have those moments of reflection which sometimes slip into a deep black hole of wonder that exceeds any smidgen of chance to comprehend?  Like this morning when I was about to begin reading C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed.”  Before I started reading, I found myself staring out the living room window and thus began about two minutes of going to that place of uncertain contemplation questioning how did we get here?  I’m looking out the window taking in the paved streets with gas and electric cars setting out to travel wherever.  We drive cars like they’ve always been around.  The constructed homes all around the neighborhood with modern appliances, pools, hot tubs, ebikes, computers, infra-red saunas and all the accoutrements of living in our technological age. I notice the stop sign out the window.  How did we human beings ever come to have laws or rules or accepted universal forms of right behavior?  I see the blue sky and if I look hard enough through the trees between me and the ocean view, I can see a tad bit of the expanse of blue water which covers most of the earth.  How did this beautiful planet come to be? My eyes flash to my right catching the tic toc movement of an old wall clock inherited from a dear great aunt who had it hanging in their Oregon ranch for over fifty years.  I can hear the clock pendulum swing… “tic, toc, tic, toc.”   Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future as Pink Floyd sang some fifty years go, speaking of how fast time flies by.  What is the future?

Down the hole we go Alice.  How did we get here on this planet?  Who are we? Here’s the doozie, is this all real?  Am I in a state of consciousness which I am only imagining all this?  Whoa Nick…just slow down a little.  Pull back the reigns! Keep it simple.  No quantum physics today!  Yet there is no doubt that behind all we can see, touch, smell, hear and taste there is Something bigger than we can imagine.  People say, “things happen for a reason.”  The fact that things happen is a certainty but for what reason?

My wife and I will on occasion do an easy ebike ride south of town which takes us down to a popular surf beach called Trestles.  A few days ago, on a Saturday afternoon we decided to do our little ride.  Normally, we ride off road on our e-mountain bikes taking on mostly single-track trails.  But this Trestles ride is our easy ride just to get out of the house and spin the wheels.  Normally, I throw on my small backpack which has a spare tube and a pump in case either of us got a flat.  I contemplated not taking it since I’ve never had a flat on this ride.  I had the pro-self me saying, “Always take it, you never know” and the con-self saying, “Come on, you never get a flat. It will be fine. What are the odds?”  So, I decided to leave it behind.  As I rode off with my wife that little voice inside my head, which I’m not even sure it is me, said, “You are going to get a flat at the furthest point away from the house.” I swear I heard that voice.   

Five miles out on the beach trail at our turn around point you guessed it.  A flat rear tire.  We have a running joke in our family when stuff like that happens.  “It’s the universe!”  Something is going on behind the scenes.  In my circle of Christian friends, some would say, “God is trying to teach you lesson.”  Certainly, God knows I still have a lot to learn.  Stupid me, right?  Others might blame it on Satan.  “The devil is trying to get your goat and make you lose your cool. It’s Heidi’s fault!”   Others would say it is simply a coincidence.  At the very least, I wonder if something else is going on behind the scenes.  Yeah, behind the scenes.  Behind all this we call reality.  Is there a vast realm of something else? Our Christianity tells us in no uncertain terms there is in fact a whole other realm behind the scenes of this present so-called reality.  Faith meets mystery.  Something is going on behind the scenes.  If it is God, then it can only be love. Has to be about love.

Madeleine L’ Engle writes in the Forward of C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed,” “We don’t have any pat answers.  The church is still pre-Copernican in its attitude toward death. The medieval picture of heaven and hell hasn’t been replaced with anything more realistic, or more loving.  Perhaps for those who are convinced that only Christians of their own way of thinking are saved and will go to heaven, the old ideas are still adequate.  But for most of us, who see a God of a much wider and greater love than that of the tribal God who only cares for his own little group, more is needed.  An that more is a leap of faith, an assurance that that which has been created with love is not going to be abandoned.  Love does not create and the annihilate.”