The Bible tells us the story of Noah, when humanity was reduced to one small family. Then there was Abraham arguing with the Lord about the annihilation of Sodom and Gomorrah. And what about the threat Jonah was meant to deliver to Nineveh? (Kind of humorous at the end). God wiping out people–entirely or selectively–happens pretty often in the Good Book. Meanwhile, Science has revealed in the deep layers of rocks and fossils the repeated destruction of life on earth– vegetation, dinosaurs, and all–by meteors and volcanoes and glaciers. Life has repeatedly come back. But different.
Biblically speaking, “God”– I AM THAT I AM–has no fixed form. Why should the earth exist forever as we know it now? If there is a cosmic energy–a “mind” if you will–perpetually creating and reshaping itself, we humans will always be too small and temporary to comprehend its magnitude. Will AI–that fearless and possibly truthless word storage mechanism–give us a sense of direction? A portent of extinction? Whatever it is, AI does not love us humans or care about our future in the universe. We ourselves are still stuck with the challenge of caring about each other, with or without the love story of a Creator God.
Humans have competing views about what “natural selection” means in our social and political actions. Chaos and violence in many forms have been forces of destruction and renewal since the birth of the planet. “Now” is not special but more of the same. Who or what will survive and thrive remains in the unknown future, the ultimate mystery. Some of us would like to insist on caring about all of us to increase the favorable odds. And that goes for the planet, too.
“God” doesn’t seem to mind starting over.
An Inconsiderable Speck
pace Robert Frost
A tiny insect crawls across the page,
and, thoughtless, feeling neither fear nor rage
I alter with a fatal fingertip
the destination of its tiny trip
and thereby philosophically rehearse
my unimportance in the universe.
Barbara Loots
Dickinson Island 2026
7 Responses
This piece a is deep thinking. Strangely, with so much going on I was telling a friend the other day that we may be living in the last days. It’s refreshing to know that “God doesn’t seem to mind starting over.
I love the poem.
Hope to see you soon!
Thanks, Barbara. Will Second Thoughts ever see you again? Cheers, Bill.
Back September 10. Mixed feelings about leaving cool Canada (more ways than one).
Thanks. I’ll be in New York then for a 9/11 anniversary event then up to Vermont for a week or so. See you eventually. Cheers, Bill.
As always I love your poetry and thoughts.
Lovely poem. Insects on a page indeed.
I think you already know one of my favorite quotations – it’s Melville – “We leave eternity to Thee…For what is Man, that he should live out the lifetime of his God?”
I hope you have had a good summer on the island, up north where it is cool. Perhaps we will be done with our heat wave by September 10, or perhaps not. At any rate, I look forward to your return!
In terms of God’s not minding starting over, I have to admit that I have some issues with the idea of God as a loving, omnipotent creator who finds it necessary to start over because apparently his creations were deeply flawed. So he simply wipes out the humans that he had so lovingly created by drowning them in a flood or by other means, and thus he can start over and maybe get it right the next time. Of course, being omnipotent, he must have been aware that his initial creation was not really going to work out, in the end, and would have to be canceled out and replaced with something newer and better.
Sorry to be negative about this, but the logic of it just doesn’t work for me!