This great space, in what form was it created?

When we believers talk about “grace”, it is probably just a sound to the outsider, a word devoid of meaning. Traditionally we understand grace with the heart. But as I discussed the topic with my Invisible Friend on the bus today (silently, for the benefit of my fellow passengers), I think we found a partial aspect of grace that can be understood mostly with the head, without too much heavy lifting by the heart. Here we go.

You may perhaps have heard about the “Omega Point”, a concept associated with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a point at the end of time and the collapse of space where everything will be accomplished. But my topic today is the opposite “Alpha Point” at the very beginning, where time and space explode out of an unimaginably small particle that contained all that would ever exist. At this point, everything was literally one: Not just in the same point of space in the same point of time, but of the same nature. There was no difference between energy and matter, nor between the tree that falls in the forest and the ear that doesn’t hear it, nor us and the farthest star. Yet everything we see, everything we are, everything that has been and will ever be, was contained in that moment.

This was the first moment of everything we know and much we don’t, for according to the most respected theories today, energy and mass barely make up 5% of the universe, the rest being dark matter (of which we know nothing) and dark energy (of which we know less – it should not really exists by all we otherwise know). It is as if the whole visible universe with even the most remote galaxies, billions and billions of them, is just The Sims running in windowed mode on a cosmic computer mostly dedicated to something unfathomable. The reality we inhabit, of matter and energy in all their forms, is not even a particularly significant part of this one universe, the only one we can even hope to know anything about.

All this, the known and the unknown and the unknowable, were contained in that tiny point, far smaller than a mustard seed, at the first moment of time, beyond which we cannot ever see, anymore than we can go further inward than to the center of a sphere. It is not that there is nothing beyond there, there is no “there” beyond there.  And yet, from that arises everything, in a singular moment.

This is a breathtaking moment even if you are a goddamning atheist. Or perhaps especially then. For the moment we mention “God”, unbidden jumps to the modern mind the cartoon image of some jolly white-bearded fellow, and this seriously spoils the magnificent image we just had. It is not for nothing that Judaism and Islam prohibit religious imagery, very strongly, ranking the practice alongside idolatry and blasphemy. I think they have a point, although I officially oppose the practice of beheading everyone who practices it. I do understand the sentiment though, for the damage these cartoonists have done to the modern soul is horrifying. To teach religion in the west today has become similar to trying to convince people to accept Spiderman as their personal savior. Most will laugh at you, and those who don’t are the ones you should worry about.

That said, there still live people who have met the Living God, the personification of the Supreme Being if you will, and have some kind of personal relationship to this. I have no problem with that either, seeing how that was pretty much all I had for the first decades of my spiritual adventures, and I would probably have thought that anyone not having roughly the same experience would be doomed to a very sad life in this world and the next. But that is beside today’s topic. Today’s topic is how to understand a particular aspect of grace.

What we need to zoom in on is the possibility, the overwhelming energy that is, at the moment of the Alpha Point, quite ready to in an instant bring into being anything and everything, although some of those anythings would take 13.7 billion years to unpack into their particular form.

This readiness to make the impossible come true is one of the key elements of grace, as perceived by us believers. Even if some of us express it as  a kind and loving father (of which there are some) giving us something reasonably useful, it is really the same thing. The overwhelming creative force utterly unfazed by the sheer impossibility of what lies ahead. The bringing about of that which was not and could not be without it.

Another important element when we talk about grace is that it is really a one-way thing. The universe could for obvious reasons not ask to come into being, and neither could any of us. It is the same with what we call grace: It already exists in its full form. It does not come into existence due to our asking, rather what we can ask for is to become able to attune to it, to perceive it, to find it and to latch on to it. A human can no more produce grace than the universe can produce its own Big Bang. This is the lesson of the Alpha Point.

To believe in grace is voluntary, and requires at least a minimal exertion of the heart. As such I cannot, and probably should not if I could, convince you. But I hope the brightness of the first mystery of the universe will remain with you for a while even if you choose the path of oblivion, as is your right.