"and from way up here you all look like ants."

The other day I cleaned up some of my long hair on the bathroom floor and noticed a bug, kind of ear-wig looking, kind of small beetle-ish. It wasn’t moving so I assumed it was dead. I was in a hurry so I left it on the floor until later. The next time I went into the bathroom there was a swarm of ants on this dead bug. I was fascinated. Ants usually appear in my cottage when it’s hot and when there are sweet crumbs to enjoy. This was a bug! I went to grab a tissue to “clean” up the swarm and the bug, then something stopped me. A question. What if I left it? The ants were just doing what ants do and what we all do, really. Eating. Food shopping. Gathering. Who am I to kill these beings? Gross! Some might say. Bugs carry disease (the maternal voice in my head yelled). But I was compelled to wait and watch. After a time the little, stalwart ants carried the bug a foot from its original location. A foot for ants is like a mile for us. Could I carry something 5 times my size that far? With help perhaps, like the ants.

I stopped and witnessed because of curiosity. I saw and appreciated a strength and cooperation in the seemingly mundane, yet life affirming acts of coming together for a common life sustaining purpose.

What else might I learn when I pause from my usual, automatic reactions to life? What else might I experience if I question commonly held beliefs? What openings and affirmations might be gifted if I allow myself simple curiosity ?

How much we know?

I had an occasion to watch The View, a program I don’t usually watch. This was a re-run about Tarot Card readings, Past Life Regression, Psychic Mediums, and Astrology. Each co-host experienced a different “modality,” in addition there was some audience participation. Needless to say, the co-hosts were visibly and verbally skeptical of any of the experiences and of the information. One co-host did not even allow the practitioner to complete what he had been invited to offer, insulting him and laughing at his process. Several of the women said they believe in God and pray to God and believe their loved ones are with God, so the services their guests were offering were basically irrelevant to them.

I understand skepticism, and even welcome it. It is healthy. What I wonder about is this: Isn’t it possible for belief in God and belief in these ways of gaining information to coexist?

If God made everything and everyone, and is responsible for all creation, then perhaps God created the ability to communicate with people who have died (and gone to heaven); and for people who have died to communicate with the living; or reincarnation; or seeing the future or aspects of the future; or helping people see and heal with past life glimpses.

We don’t know everything about the earth we live on. There are places that humans have not been able to get to, to even see let alone understand - the deepest parts of the ocean and all that lives there; the deepest forests and every kind of plant; every single piece of land with its myriad of habitats. Humans have not identified every species of living being on the planet. Humans have not seen all that is beyond the earth and we keep discovering more stars and galaxies. We have not completely figured out human behavior given the thousands of cultures on the earth. We have not even identified every single language humans have used in the past and now, or the language of animals.

Isn’t it just a bit overconfident to assume that we know what God has created and what God hasn’t? If there are so many ways to communicate – different spoken and non-spoken languages, dance, art, music, tears, laughter, silence, hugs, screams, expressions, writing and so many others – isn’t it possible that God also created ways to communicate that we have yet to understand like through dreams, mediums, cards, the stars and seeing into the past and the future?

Religion/spirituality and the metaphysical are not mutually exclusive. I think if God is all powerful, all knowing, all present and creator, God also created many, many ways to communicate, to gather information, to learn, and to understand each other. And to presume otherwise is making an assumption that humans can know everything about God.