The Possibilities of Life

"Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters." -Genesis 1:2

At the beginning of every endeavor, and at the beginning of every new stage of life, or even in periods of limbo and reflection, we should recognize the Spirit of God hovering over the waters of our lives. The Spirit of God, referred to elsewhere in Scripture as the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, and which has countless names in other faith traditions and in other literary contexts (the Spirit of the World, in the Alchemist), is the energy that sustains all of life. The Spirit of God is what quickens the flesh, and separates the living from the dead. He is called, in the New Testament, the "Comforter."

Life has countless possibilities. I have always been the kind of person to think in terms of possibilities, rather than actualities. I have a healthy sense of realism, in my own way, though it is frequently misunderstood. That is because although I recognize constraints and challenges, I do not actually recognize the existence of absolute barriers. The old cliche "where there's a will, there's a way," is not quite complete though. Any old will is not adequate to over come all barriers. Sometimes it takes extraordinary will, and determination, and sweat, and all too often, tears, to accomplish something. But the potential for such accomplishment is reason enough to make the attempt.

When Sir Edmund Hillary was asked why he climbed Mount Everest, he replied "because it was there." There are so many Everests to climb in life, and the energy of the Spirit of God empowers us to see the possibilities, and we can therein be motivated to action. Yet, the Spirit of God is a positive energy only. Light and Darkness literal opposites. They cannot occupy the same space at the same time. They are wholly incompatible. Consequently, if the Spirit of God is who/what grants us the positive life energy to see the possibilities and opportunities for fulfillment, then it is Darkness and Negative Energy that obscure that view.

The Spirit of God is a force of Imagination, and it is Imagination that have driven the human spirit to pursue and accomplish those things that changed the world. It is the dreamers who ultimately change the world. It is those people who see the possibility that things could be other than they are who leave their mark on history, for good or for bad. But those who focus only on barriers to the achievement of the dreamed for ends, they will always be the victims of circumstance, the subject of their own small worlds. It is the people who are able to expand their scope of vision beyond what is actual at the moment who are the ones able to take the possible and turn it into the actual. All change in history is the subject of people who have done this very thing.

For the last year and a half, I have signed all of my business emails with this quote:

"What the future-predictors, the change-analysts, and trend-tenders say in effect is that with the aid of institute resources, computers, linear programming, etc. they will deal with the kinds of change that are not the consequence of the Random Event, the Genius, the Maniac, and the Prophet. To which I can only say: there really aren’t any; not any worth looking at anyhow." --Robert Nisbet

The three agents of change mentioned in Nisbet's quote who are human are able to change the world because of a particular orientation of their mental state that differentiates them from the vast majority of the rest of the world. The Genius looks upon the obstacles of the world and devotes his intellect to overcoming them, whether through science or military force or through the pen. The Maniac is able to overcome the obstacles to changing the world merely because he likely doesn't recognize their existence. The Prophet, on the other hand, sees the problems, and knows he cannot fix them, and so he just shouts loudly, under severe persecution and ridicule, about the problem that few but he recognize, and he just keeps shouting until he does, or until there is change. Usually it is the former. But then, after his death, is usually when the change occurs. The Prophet, unlike the Genius and the Maniac, is usually a martyr, and whose goal is not often achieved in his own lifetime.

But uniting all three of these figures is a dogged determination that things be other than they are. They live in the world of possibilities, for if they did not believe that their desired End was achievable, they would never attempt its pursuit. This is the concept of Hope.

The Jewish writer of the Book of Hebrews says "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In the Anglican tradition, the Eucharistic Prayer (Rite II) says, after the Holy Communion, "Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favor and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom."

The world of possibilities, of the Everlasting Kingdom of God, of changing this world, of the fantastic, the science fiction, all of these things are the province if Hope and Faith. Without hope, the mortal existence of man is nothing more than a march toward the grave fatalistically consumed by militant determinism.

The Spirit of God hovers over the waters of our own lives, which at all times possess a lack of form and a darkness of potential energy whose beauty can be manifested through hope and faith. We have an ethical obligation to ourselves, our fellow man, and to God to keep faith, and to, as Theodore Roosevelt put it, "spend our life in a worthy cause." Such worthy causes exist only in the world of possibilities, and it is our duty to turn them into actualities.