Absolutely Relative, Part 2
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. Marcus Aurelius[1]
Our family spent one spring break in the San Francisco area. One of our stops was the Winchester House in San Jose. This large mansion – 500 rooms by some counts – was home to Sarah Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester and heiress to the Winchester Firearms fortune. The legend of Sarah Winchester, shared with us by our guide and believed to be more fiction than fact, was that Mrs. Winchester was haunted by the ghosts of the countless people killed by the firearms her late husband produced and sold. The mansion was in a constant state of construction and renovation until her death. It is populated by hallways, doors, and staircases that lead nowhere, presumably to confuse the spirits pursuing her. She kept building and remodeling in order to stay ahead of her revenge-seeking demons.
The legend of Sarah Winchester is of one seeking absolute refuge from her pursuers. Refuge, however, could not be established beyond a fixed point in space and time because her safety needs changed as the conditions (spirits) around her changed. Her absolute required constant movement, so her surroundings were always a work in progress and never a completed work. Winchester’s story, aside from its factual dubiousness, holds an intriguing lesson for us: Absolutes are not fixed across time and space but are relative to current conditions. We can only be certain about anything within a limited and fixed range of our experiential reality. We cannot perceive unchanging absolutes because our 3-dimensional, time-and-space existence is always a recycled and recycling work in progress. Like the Winchester House, it is never finished. Whatever the absolute may be, it contains and transcends everything that was, is now, and ever will be in all of its ever-evolving glory. In other words, all of the continuous motion of life occurs within the absolute we seek. We cannot grasp the nature of the absolute any more than a fish can grasp the nature of water. We are both in and of the absolute, and it is absolutely invisible and unfathomable to us.
Although our lives are marked by continuous growth, construction, travel, and change, from the view of the absolute (as if I would know), everything remains the same. If we compare our life with our concept of an atom, the inner life is in constant motion while its outer appearance is stable. For all of our apparent advances in science, medicine, and every other field of endeavor, we continue to labor against the same forces and seek solutions to the same problems, if not individually then as a collective. While central heating systems are less labor-intensive than fire-building for providing heat, we still struggle against the cold. Instruments of warfare have advanced in their precision and lethality, but our world is no closer to peaceful co-existence, and innocent lives continue to be lost from the violent disagreements of a few. In spite of advances in the quantities of food produced, much of the world’s population goes hungry. Ever-evolving medical practices aside, people continue to die from countless conditions other than old age. For all the amazing advances we’ve made in technology, we’ve yet to eradicate the essential curses plaguing humankind, like illness, trauma, and deficits in basic needs like food, shelter, and clean water. Worse yet, we continue to make conditions of suffering for the privileged less severe at the cost of the same conditions becoming more severe for the disadvantaged. The saying, “the more things change, the more they remain the same” comes to mind.
It seems the “progress” we think we make is not really maturing us, either individually or collectively, as if only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The kingdom of heaven, nirvana, enlightenment, becoming One with God – whatever we name the state of being we claim to seek – is not attainable within the endless cycling of our daily activities because they only lead to more of the same. That is not where the power for real change resides. The Christian call to Repent! is a call to transform – not by upgrading our technical capabilities, but by refocusing and expanding our conscious awareness. The foundation of our challenges is spiritual, intangible, and, thus, outside the reach of science and technology. Trying to find salvation through technology is like trying to find the edge of the universe – the farther out we look, the more universe there is to see. We’re just putting a new coat of paint on the same old room and calling it progress.
The new, transforming awareness – what Jesus called the kingdom of God – requires faith and belief before it can emerge from inside of us. That awareness cannot awaken until we develop the new type of vision granted from that which cannot be observed or measured. Until that occurs, our truths will remain absolutely relative.
This is the 36th in a series of Life Notes on Time and Eternity. The opinions expressed are mine. To engage with me or to explore contemplative spiritual direction, contact me at ghildenbrand@sunflower.com.
[1] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/13029?ref=truth, accessed January 9, 2024.
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