The Illusion of Center

It is in our nature to seek center. The center is often the starting point, and middle ground is often the destination. The center is the place which does not move. To live in the center of town is to be near everything, and the middle seat is the optimal viewing position. Most of our sporting events start at half court and our politics are always seeking the moderate vote. Earthquakes begin at the Epicenter and Nuclear Bombs explode at the Hypocenter.

While most of this is true, the point of comfort is untrue. The center moves, it is not constant and stable. Everything moves. We know that people change, technology advances. What is known today is found untrue tomorrow. The Earth spins, the Moon revolves, the Sun travels, the galaxy progresses, and the universe expands. Interestingly, one might seek to find the center of the universe; the epicenter of our reality. Unfortunately, this task is futile. Every point in the universe appears to be the center. Like balls, evenly spaced on an elastic string every point is moving away from every other point in the universe. We are all moving but we all appear to be the only one stopped. We are the center of the universe, and so is everyone else. Strange.

Christians often make the claim that Jesus is the center of the Church, he is the unmoving goal which Christians aspire to. The fighting comes when Christians disagree on where exactly our center is found. Some say He is here, others that He is there. I would argue that Jesus, like everything else in our existence is moving and at the same time at the center. He is the center in a universe which has no center.

Space Mirror

What if we found a reflective surface in space? Follow me on this one – we could see the past.

When you look up at the night sky, you do not see stars as they are now. You are literally looking into the past becuase you are seeing the light that was emitted from the star long ago, it took time to get to your eye. So, if you are looking at our closest star other than the Sun, Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light years away, you are seeing what it looked like 4.2 years ago.  It took the light which you see 4.2 years to get from the star to you.

Everyday we receive new images of objects in space from our telescopes. What if we one of those pictures comes back with a reflection of Earth? If there is something out there that is reflective and it is angled so that the light bounces straight back to Earth we could literally see the past.

If it is 5,000 light years away, we would see what the Earth looked like 10,000 years ago. 5,000 for the light from earth to get to the mirror and 5,000 more for the light to make it back to Earth. If we kept watching it, we would literally watch the past.

Ok, that is all ‘what if’. Admittedly the odds of finding a perfectly reflective object angled exactly right are astronomical, of course so are the possibilities in the massive abyss of space. Here is where the rubber meets the road. We could shoot a mirror into space. Just put it on a path and let it go with no objective to stop or come back.  Due to the rotation of the Earth and its circumnavigation of the Sun we would only get one image per year, when we are in the exact same place.  It would be like watching a time laps of the history of the Earth in reverse. Admittedly, the real benefit would be slow in coming as the mirror starts close and images are of recent events. Generations for now would have the benefit of seeing hundreds and thousands of years in the past.

The faster we made it go, the faster the history would rewind.

Please, somebody tell me what is wrong with this idea! Because I’m totally ready to do it.

 

In His Head

I think we are all figments of God’s imagination.

Reduce anything and you will reach energy.

What is mind? Mind is energy.

To think is to move electrons around on your brain. Your brain is simply energy amassed.

To imagine is to conger a creation in your mind.

That creation is physically nothing more than energy moving about; just like us.

Is it so far fetched to recognize than we, and everything in our reality, is exactly the same as everything we imagine? Understanding this begs the question: is it so far fetched that we are operating entirely within the mind of a greater being?

After all, we are said to be “like” God, so as it is in our mind, so is it is His.

If our thoughts are wholly energy, so may be His. We are wholly energy, so we may be His thoughts.