I don’t really know what to do with my life unless I’m asking questions and seeking answers. I’ve just never been someone who can go through time without thinking. Without making meaning of the world.

I have a spiritual director because I have lots of questions, and I need help. And, I’ve been in New Age spiritual spaces that I think are immoral, and I wanted some kind of protection from going down rabbit holes that I thought brought me more confusion than clarity.

And I’m honestly still confused about a lot of things. And in the age of information, I think you just need more help and support on the spiritual path.

You can get taken to too many places, and at the end of them are too many cults.

I don’t want to be in a cult!

My inquiry as of late has been in a few places:

If any of these interest you, please reply! I’m Pandora’s endless body of curiosity, and I can’t stop.

If you’ve been alive for the last several years, you’ve probably seen the picture of the black hole. It’s, as its name says, black. And in the image, you can see this ring of orange and a bright burst of yellow to one side.

That ring of light around it is called a photon ring. It is a feature formed by light rays that orbit a black hole one or more times before escaping to an observer (us).

Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape.

Your elementary science might remind you that they’re formed from collapsed massive stars.

They are characterized by an event horizon (point of no return), a central singularity of infinite density, and an accretion disk of hot, swirling matter.

In a black hole, the singularity is the point where matter is compressed so completely that the known laws of physics break down.

All the mass and all the gravity gets crushed into zero volume and infinite density.

It’s difficult to picture because it isn’t a “thing” in any normal sense. There is no structure left. No atoms. No space between anything. Just total collapse of everything.

And if that isn’t the closest thing to “oneness” that we see in the cosmos, I don’t know what is.

In the singularity, space and time themselves curve inward so violently that they converge at this single point.

From the outside, we cannot see it. Mathematics fails before we reach it. But theoretically, this is where gravity becomes absolute.

Which means, matter loses its form, dimensions lose their stability, and the structure of reality, as we understand it, stops functioning.

Now, an accretion disk of hot, swirling matter is everything that didn’t quite make it in.

Picture gas, dust, light, maybe even stars — spiraling around the black hole like water circling a drain. But this isn’t calm water. It’s friction, compression, radiation. It glows. It burns. It becomes one of the brightest things in the universe.

The singularity is the silent center.

The accretion disk is the drama around it.

One is absolute stillness through collapse.

The other is chaos through proximity.

And honestly? It’s a pretty good metaphor for the human condition. Which is why I’m perplexed by the black hole. Because I believe the cosmos tells us something about ourselves. And so the black hole has to have a place in the body of knowledge and wisdom to say something about who and what we are.

And the more you go into this, the more absolutely incredible it is.

But Val, what’s the point?

The point is that I think the black hole, more than any other space feature, or whatever you want to call it, is telling us something about God (it’s always about God, don’t you know that?).

And, may, in my hypothesis, even be the face of God.

Yes, the face of God.

God as creator and destroyer of all things. God as invisible to the eye except when they impact something surrounding them. God as mover and purveyor of time and space. God as transformer of all things we can possibly understand. God as singularity, as oneness.

Oneness not just spiritually, but of all things.

A stable (stationary) black hole can only be described by three measurable properties:

Sound anything like the Holy Trinity? The Trimurti? The Three Pure Ones (Taoism)?

And I’m not saying that because it’s just a grouping of three. I’m saying that because there are metaphorical connections, and in my world, metaphor is truth. Thats why art works. If you can describe it another way, you’re seeing more of its sides.

Father = Charge, Son = Mass, Holy Spirit = Spin

And where it doesn’t fit perfectly, good!

So good! Because we have an opportunity to challenge our theology. And we want things that challenge our theology.

All theology must reckon with the modern age or be stuck in a a cage of it’s own making.

Science is spirituality.

And I think we’re all seeking the same thing. And science gives us really, really key pieces in the puzzle.

It’s very cool to live in a time when we have new information about the cosmos, the world, matter, physics, and logic all the time. And our theology can follow.

Another thing that ties me to black holes is my own obsession with “the void,” for which I felt like I used to treat as a religion. I mean, you create “for the void”. You do things to “fill the void”.

And whenever I see someone talking about how they lost meaning and purpose in their life, they often say the words “fill the void”.

And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Humans seem to need to describe the gap, cavern, or emptiness as so deep and all-consuming that they use the term ‘void’ to describe the part of themselves where God should be.

How can that not be totally, utterly, revealing?

When God is not there, a void is created, and that void must be filled. As though it has its own force and movement, as though it will suck whatever it can get into it.

And I don’t think that’s some kind of evil; I think that’s a function of our creator.

Okay - signing off for the day,
Val

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