quantum theology 2 - figuring the odds

How do we figure the odds to God?

Let's change the subject for a moment. Picture your favorite field in May. A hive of bees lives there. Bees love pollen, and the best things in life: clover, blossoms, acacia, tupelo, wildflowers, etc. All sorts of things are in the field. It is like an amusement park for the bees.

On an average morning, the bees go pollinating and doing their bee-things. You are stuck at work without any honey, thinking about bees and Winnie the Pooh. You can’t afford to go outside on this perfect morning, and are stuck in front of your monitor without even a digital flower. Your mind wanders and you think about the life of a bee. Where are they?

Draw a map. Beginning from an overhead view of the meadow, sketch the trees and clearings, and all other things that are fixed. Now it's the hard part. You can’t tell where each bee is – they aren't like trees or stones – they move around in search of mellow fruitfulness. Because there are thousands of lucky bees, and you can’t be there to photograph or even count them, you have to guess. Bees are not static, they can't be pinpointed. You resort to guesswork.

They are probably around those lilacs. It is probable that many are on the blooming apple tree. There may be a few on the mosses. One or two may perch on a scrap of candy I dropped recently. What you draw is a map of the odds, to show the probable locations of some bees around the landmarks. Make a bee-key for your map: shade where they might be, darker patches where they should be, even darker on the particularly sweet pollen, a mark around the hive. That aerial view might catch all of the bees, or it might not. Even the hive may have collapsed.

Mapping a swarm of bees is like mapping God. We begin to guess where God might be these days. God isn’t here with me, but God could be at church, or maybe at the symphony (Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie called that church), or at the Da Vinci exhibit. If we were to say that God is probably in church, can we be sure? Of course not. It’s all probability.

I might trace my map of places to find God: my synagogue in Venice, a hiking path in Glacier National Park, fly fishing, at a James Brown concert would be darkly shaded. But these are all just likely scenarios. That is, it seems likely to find God in Langston Hughes, but there’s no guarantee. Be careful: when you're busy looking for places to find God, you might miss God with you right now.