November 07, 2023 – B

"God's will" is an interesting concept,
and it applies to everything that
"Amazing coincidence" would cover as well.

It also opens the way to the Grande Paradox of Life:
Everything is coincidental and nothing is.
Everything is a matter of chance and nothing is.

We walk two paths at the same time
and live with a foot in two worlds at once.
We are the bridge between transcendent reality
(Also called "The Mystery" [or "The Great Mystery"],
or "The Tao," or "The Totality," or "God,")
and personal experience
(Birth defects, accidents, wars, earthquakes, etc.),
as we try to put the experience of transcendent reality
together with the idea of ALS with the idea of "a loving God,"
for example.

And, as we look back over our life,
with all of the wrong turns,
dead ends,
disappointments,
wins and losses,
etc.
it appears that there is a thread
of cause and effect running through
all the events and experiences
that lead us to conclude
"everything worked together to bring me right here
right now,"
and "If that had not happened, 
that wouldn't have,
and that wouldn't have..."
and here I am!"

It all had to be just what it was 
to produce here/now.
And that looks like a plan,
and that implies a planner,
and "Anything can happen,
but nothing can go wrong."

But if something else had happened,
at the end, looking back, 
we would say, "Nothing can go wrong."

Yet, in truth, the end of the dinosaurs 
was quite wrong for the dinosaurs, etc.
And slavery and the genocide of indigenous people
was/is the highest form of wrong there is--
no matter what a distant outcome might be.

This is the thing about outcomes:
they never end.
Cause and effect is a false phrase
because the effects become causes
with more effects,
and things spin out in a good/bad/evil
blend so that nothing accurate can be said
about anything when everything is taken into account.

Things "just are,"
and they are good and bad and evil
depending on our point of view
throughout time.

Point of view/perspective/impression/judgment
is no way to evaluate/designate good/bad/evil
Good/bad/evil is always good for whom?
Bad for whom? Evil for whom? When? How?

Things just are
and whether they are good or not
depends on the narrow outcome we are using
to make the estimation.
Looked at from our point of view,
it appears to be "a miracle" 
that things worked out as they did.
Looked at from other points of view
(That of Native Americans, or African Americans, say),
and the outcome has a different value attached.

And "God's will" is impossible to declare
because it all is still being "worked out,"
and there is no end to the configuration 
of possibilities,
and no results are ever complete and final.

It is all process in the making,
chaos creating chaos
when looked at from far-enough away,
like galaxies being born
and black holes devouring other galaxies
eternally and forever. Amen.

–0–