“We know, of course, that the visible world is composed of protons, neutrons and electrons that combine to form atoms of different elements, and we know those elements are the building blocks of the planets and stars that give rise to solar systems and galaxies.
What we didn’t know until very recently, however, is that those protons, neutrons and electrons appear to form less than 5 percent of the universe, and questions remain about how these building blocks arose. If regular matter represents only a small slice of the universe, what is the rest of the universe made of?” – excerpt from Through the Wormhole
“Relax, ” said the night man, “We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave.”
– Hotel California, Eagles
My finished painting doesn’t look quite as dark as the image above makes it out to be. Then again, I’ll grant you that might be my own little delusion.
Suffice it to say, it feels lighter somehow.
The painting morphed with each visit to my studio. It started off by growing darker and darker, and then, it began shifting to include gleams of light and brightness. It seemed to represent a far-off piece of night sky.
At its darkest I thought it was finished and I decided to call it Kathleen’s Dying.
Slowly the brightness grew and, finally, I added my photo of the motel sign and realized that the painting was resolved. It had become a cosmic motel and sported a new name, You Can Check Out…
It had become the ultimate motel, the one where we can always check out, but, as the Eagles remind us, we can never really leave.
Science tells us that we are made of the same stuff as stars. I know that we are energy, atomic and sub-atomic infinite dust. We are protons, neutrons, electrons but more importantly we are mostly immaterial, or at least, with the measuring devices we have available to us, we have discovered that there is more not-there than there.
We can call that consciousness, energy, or we can call it soul. It doesn’t really matter what words we use or what our belief systems are, there is some innate hunch that tells us there is more to all this than meets the eye. In fact, with all the powerful microscopes and telescopes, we now know that our eyes have never told us the whole truth at all.
I just have to spend a minute or two with some of these Hubble images to be forever humbled at all that I don’t know. Too, I can see powerful microscope images and get completely flummoxed at all that is going beneath what I think I see. The more I read and think these pretzel-thoughts, the more I recognize that, in the grand scheme of things, well…seriously, it’s a pretty grand scheme and what could I possibly know or not know?
However. I do know that love exists. Perhaps our purpose is to simply clarify and magnify our love for each other. We all know about love. It moves mountains, stands in the way of hate and intolerance, protects children and compassionately ushers the dying to their new worlds. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And yet, love is immeasurable.
Perhaps one day an uber-microscope will tell us what we already intuitively know, that all our sub-atomic particles are spinning in concert together, connected by the most powerful and infinite force in the world – love.
Love is always the answer, and love, my friends, never dies.
“If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet…everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” – Neils Bohr, Danish physicist.
LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS PAINTING!
Thanks so much Barb. That means a lot coming from you.
Did you know that if you removed all the empty space in a human body, that what you’d have left could be balanced on the point of a pin? And if you removed all the empty space in the planet Earth, the particles would fit inside a football stadium?
That has nothing to do with love — which I would agree is the thing that makes the Universe work — but it definitely points to what you’ve been saying. I’ve often thought of Love (with a capital “L”) as being a synonym for God (ie. “In Love, we live and move and have our being.”). And pondering the idea that we can never be separated from Love — and therefore from God, or each other — has been one of those ideas that has helped me through the passing of my father and one of my closest friends.
Very nice blog post. Thanks for writing it. 🙂
Matt, thanks so much for your comments. I had seen that fact about the human body and space and the one about the Earth too, but had forgotten the details and couldn’t seem to find it online. I had wanted to include it in my post, so thank you so much for doing it for me!
I don’t know about you, but often when I’m reading other blogs, I get as much out of the comments as the original post. Your comment is the kind of thing I’m referring to. I love these ongoing conversations. It’s wonderful to discover other people are pondering the same things.
This post is officially one of my favorites. Thank you. Bless you. Keep ’em coming.
Thank you so much Mary…I really appreciate your encouragement.
This painting is quite a contrast to a previous one: “This is it — Living in the Present.” Even though you say it’s brighter than it was, my first thought was : “This is it — Kathleen’s Dying.”
Yes, love is immeasurable and it will get you through this dark and stormy night.
You’re right Martha. It really is quite dark. I think I was doing that denial thing again. More than dark, it’s a wonder I didn’t go right through the canvas with how hard I worked that surface 🙂
Quantum imaginings… you have managed to sum up so succinctly an unimaginable galaxy of inter-relatedness, stunning. I love that ‘there is more not-there than there.’ Reminds me of an Anglican traditional prayer, If God is infinitely more than we can ask or imagine… and by God I mean the Universe and interconnectedness of everything.
And the painting is gorgeous, love the depth and layered colour. Very different from other things you have done…?
I like the idea of God being infinitely more than we can imagine. Given the views from Hubble, it’s hard to even imagine what we already see. It’s all so crazy BIG.
I’m loving this painting too. It really is quite a bit different. But then, I’m working on something else this week that is another complete out-of-left-field departure too. I’m just running with whatever shows up 🙂