Luminous

Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Berkeley 2/19/12
Kings 2:1-12 • Psalm 50:1-6 • 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 • Mark 9:2-9
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor

Today is transfiguration Sunday. Every year I see this Sunday as a kind of great galactic burst of light before the dark and germinating forty days of Lent. I felt somewhat challenged this week to preach about the glorious mountaintop experience of the transfiguration, since my father’s death was only three weeks ago, and I have been intermittently visiting the valley of the shadow of death.

But I am glad to say that amidst the mourning I have experienced a new perspective- I only remember the good and luminous things about my father, as is so often the case when you lose someone. I treasure the time I got to spend with him, and I thank God that it was such an amazingly long time- he lived to be 89 and was absolutely lucid right to the very end.

My father was a life-long atheist, but I had no doubt at all that he would be welcomed into the loving arms of God. His name after all, is David, or, in Hebrew, Dovid, meaning, “the beloved.” And I imagined that once he woke up into the next world, in the living presence of God, he would have the surprise of his life! I even imagined that he might be somewhat annoyed to have his atheism proven wrong.

The day that he died I initially felt OK. I felt that I had done my grieving when I heard that he was in hospice care, and anyway there had been all those death bed visits when he revived, again and again. And it was certainly time. But then evening fell and it began to get dark. I was seized by fear and I realized that I had never had to make it through the night without my father. I remembered C.S. Lewis’ striking first sentence in his amazing book, “A Grief Observed.”

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness… I keep on swallowing.

My father was a geologist, who had a great love of the bursting glory of the cosmos above and around us. I remember my father first showing me the milky way out in a field on a snowy night in Ithaca New York, when all the stars were out. He explained that our view was from within the galaxy, and so the milky way was just the thickness of the multitudes of stars as we gazed through the breadth of the great spiral. I remember lying down in that same field in the summer with my father and brothers, just waiting and watching until we saw a shooting star. I remember my father first telling me that the sun was a star and the earth was a planet and the moon was, well, a moon.

Since I had in-house lecturer on Astronomy, Geology and Physical science from the time I can first remember hearing words until I was 18 and fled from home, my interest in science was eventually dulled. But now when I hear people talking about science, about astronomy, when I hear the new concepts in particle physics and string theory (pet loves of my husband’s) I am drawn to the science, because it reminds me of my dad. Perhaps, in spite of myself, like Elisha, I am to inherit a double (or at least a single) share of my father’s spirit.

I sometimes feel that as a religious people we should be uniquely qualified to believe in some of the most far-fetched scientific theories. If we can accept the infinite nature of God, God’s love, God’s power, God’s strength, as described today in our psalm, we should have no problem believing in the infinite nature of the universe. Or many of the more fantastic and glorious notions of modern science.

Last week I heard an explanation of the theory of the Holographic Universe. This has become a particularly favorite of mine, brought to us by Quantum Mechanics. It yields a surprisingly God-like picture of the universe. The theory of the holographic universe was inspired by the discovery that when any object enters a black hole out in space, all of the information about that particular object is somehow recorded on the surface of the black hole (what they call the “event horizon”) after it goes in. And apparently, the magic of string theory allows that ALL of the information for all that is or will be or has ever been is recorded- sort of “painted” on some surface boundary of the universe- the “cosmological horizon.” And even more incredibly, our living reality is quite possibly a projected hologram of that information. All that was is and ever will be. If all the information that ever was or ever will be could be seen as the mind of God, could it be said that we, and all around us are the thoughts of God? Or the luminescent dreams of God, lovingly and eternally projected forth?

Way back in 1930, before string theory was a twinkle (or a loop) in anyone’s eye, James Hopwood Jeans wrote: “The stream of [scientific] knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter... we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter.”

Jeans felt that consciousness came first, then the matter it created. Consciousness like the infinite scroll of information “painted” on the cosmological horizon- the “tent” of the universe.

The last time I saw my father I asked if I could give him a blessing. He always said yes and always seemed grateful and touched. Since I felt I could not mention God at the death bed of this devout Atheist, I prayed that the earth, that he loved so much, would give him its balance and beauty and peace, and that the cosmos that so delighted him would support him and love him and give him energy and light.

If grief is like one of those great black holes in the universe, then what is the information left on the outside? What remains from that which vanishes? We live on the surface, where all the precious information still abides- the face of our loved one- their smile, their stories, their loves, their passions. They are with us still, maybe not in the same bodily way, maybe more like a transfigured dream of them, glowing in our memory, keeping the their very shape and colors in our hearts and minds .

I have just been looking through my albums for pictures of my father. I found a great one taken when he was in the best of heath, at 31 years old, when my whole family had just climbed a mountain in New Hampshire. His hands are on his knees as he sits on the top of the mountain, beaming this enormous smile. I was, like Peter, basically thunderstruck at his radiance, and, like Peter, I tried to quantify and house the experience of him by some futile gesture. My father immediately turned his ever-present camera on me and said, what are you doing?
“Counting your feet.” I said. And sure enough, another picture shows me, at five years old, with my counting finger out, pointing to one of his boots. My mouth is open, saying either “one,” or “two,” measuring the dimensions of my infinite universe.