with dice?

us & God

the Greeks believed in Fate,
with our lives as thread, spun and cut by the gods,
and at the same time they believed in individual will,
our lives in our own control,
with Fate and the gods adversary to be defeated,

even these days we can leap to feeling
that each action that happens, each disaster, each success,
each thwarting or abetting of our will,
is part of a plan,
with God like a helicopter parent who takes care of us,
who rewards us, who punishes us,
we are as infants with God as hovering parent
who has ends we cannot fathom,
and means we certainly cannot fathom,
God as watchmaker is but a distant memory from an earlier time,

we need a reorientation of perspective,
we need to accept capriciousness, randomness within our world,
dice rolls that destroy and create,
and which are as basic to the universe
as the deep, fundamental yearning toward order and complexity
that also drives the universe,
like an engine that will not cut off,
a drive that pushes us toward the heights we might get to
if we align ourselves with connection,
we somehow must simultaneously adapt and assert within the possibilities,
we must hold to relationship, to love,

it is important to be, to strive, to not to yield,
and it is important also TO yield,
how vital it is to know the difference as to when,
and deal with it.

by Henry H. Walker
June 12, ’11