As I mentioned in my previous post, in the last couple of years I’ve been on a journey of deconstructing my faith. The ways I looked at the world, the ways I understood my faith, God, religion and what that meant for me have been totally ripped apart. Safe to say it has been, and still is, extremely painful. The glass box shattered, my foundations were gone, in many ways the faith I had grown up with was dead.
I’m slowly starting to realise that death is part of life. Nothing is finite, everything must come to an end, death is a necessary part of the universe. But death isn’t the end.
It seems that throughout the universe there’s a theme of death bringing new life, loss bringing renewal. Stars explode and form new stars, which then again explode and form planets and asteroids and moons. Life begins and as you sweep through the food chain, one life ending in order for another to flourish. In his book “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing”, Lawrence M. Krauss said this:
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“The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements – the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution – weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.”
My old faith, my old way of seeing the world died. But from that death I’m discovering something new. In letting go of my old, limited understanding of God, I’ve been able to discover a wider, deeper understanding of the ground of my being and source of all life. Death is leading to life, loss is leading to renewal, and the end is really just the beginning.
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