Weekly Musings IV - Everything and Nothing

“My curiosity laid in the unknown”

I had a really good conversation with a friend today about creativity, planning your life, and real estate. I had an equally interesting conversation with my therapist right before around my deepest fears and how I wrestle with death.

What is at the end of a black hole? That’s a question that teenage Rachel grappled with thumbing through the likes of Brian Greene and Stephen Hawking. I wanted to understand - I wanted to explain to someone that using this math and this theorem - that this is what was at the end. My curiosity laid in the unknown.

Naturally, when I got older, I started thinking about the end of a human life. Similar parallels, different topics. Now what I really wrestle with is my intersection of faith and rationale, and the harmony of thought between the two. I believe in God, but I also wrestle with certain theology presented by the church. How can one book, or any religious text, so precisely lay out that if we do xyz this is what is intended for us, and this is what will become of us. How can that much control be exercised?

The Greeks believed in multiple deities - Zeus, Hera, Athena and yet years later what has come from it? Children books filled with mythical Greek gods that hold no weight in current modern day society. Muslims believe in Allah. Buddhist’s don’t acknowledge a supreme God or deity. Christians believe in the trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

I’m not opening this up as a debate, but rather my own stream of thoughts around the undoing, questioning, and reworking of my own carefully constructed belief systems.

Do we as humans lean on faith in order to reconcile our own fears of death, the unknown?

And yet - in light of this, of questioning and debating, my own default in times of hardship will be on my knees praying.

So perhaps faith is truly the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.