07 08 11 Cranberries and The Big Bang

I walked down the hill below our house to begin figuring out how to clean up the area where I was cutting cottonwoods a few months ago. Cottonwoods grow an amazing amount of branches and the cleanup is always more than I expect.

As I looked at the newly cleared area the first thing I saw was a surprise. The predominant vista I expected was bunches of dead things—dead branches and logs waiting to be dragged away. T

hat was the sight I expected, but that is not what stood out. What stood out were some of the tallest high bush cranberry bushes I had ever seen, and all of them laden with the early, green berries. I simply could not believe how much they had grown and developed in such a short time. By August we will likely have one of the most abundant cranberry crops I have experienced.

It is amazing how life flourishes after a major watershed event, even a seemingly destructive watershed event like the cutting of the canopy trees. This year, and maybe next, the shrub-level plants are flourishing. If left alone, however, it won’t be many years before indigenous trees will return. We won’t leave it alone, of course, because our plan is different than that; we plan to select a variety of fruit trees to go there. For now, after the cutting and before we are ready to plant new trees, I simply and wonder at the exuberance of high bush cranberries that can leap for the sky, even as they bear a bumper crop of fruit! What joy! What freedom: free for a season or two of unusual fruitfulness.

The thing that set them free, of course, is an interruption of the normal cycle of things. Instead of the creatures of the forest maturing together at a steady state, the trees were removed, creating an artificially fruitful environment for the cranberries (and the fireweed, and a few other plants I can’t identify). Life is quite obviously opportunistic, always ready to take advantage of new openings when they come.

Scientists and theologians have both described one such interruption in the normal cycle that took place on a cosmic scale. Scientists describe the Big Bang as that moment when the universe sprang from nothing into being. In that one moment all the energy and all of the time of the universe simply appeared, and all that energy has been moving and evolving through time ever since. The energy is hugely important, of course because it is energy that has the ability to cool and coalesce into matter, and it is the different forms of matter that can enter into the chemical reactions that make up the building blocks of life itself, and it is the building blocks of life that can evolve through time to allow the wonderful diversity that we all enjoy on this planet—and surel) on others. That one moment, the Big Bang, was a watershed event that provided the opportunity for all of life, past, present and future, to enjoy.

For theologians, this moment also tells us something of God. Theologians realize that there was a time before space-time (is there a better vocabulary to describe this than “a time before time”?), and that something we call God chose to bring space-time into existence, beginning with what scientists call The Big Bang. The biblical narrative describes this decisive moment as God speaking, saying, “Let there be light, and there was light (Genesis 1:3).” This means that although we experience God’s involvement in the history of space-time, God is also beyond space-time as we know it. For me, it is also hugely important to note that God is quite obviously capable of causing great discontinuities to enter into reality; God showed made that abundantly clear at the moment of creation. God is going to interrupt the normal cycle of things periodically, so that a good future will be the result.

When people get it, that is when it becomes a real part of people’s awareness that God is at work for good in watershed moments, it is like Neo in the movie Matrix, who discovers that he has been duped into living an unreal life that contributed to the virtual enslavement of all humanity. From that moment on he does not see things the same, nor can he live the same. Knowing that reality is different than he thought, he knows the future must be changed and he must be a part of that change.

That is something like the life we live. God really does make possible the good that should be, and we must live for that possibility. In fact, right now we live in between the two realities. Right now we still suffer and see injustice, but we also see new possibility and can live for nothing else. Right now we have hope, and that is what our lives must be about—today we must be about “living into” the hope that is real for the future.

I think of these things as I look at all the monumental disruptions now underway in our world—economic, technological, social-relational and ecological (more?). I also think of these things when I think about why I cut the cottonwood trees. I think of these things as I look at my cranberries, growing and producing like never before. And I think of these things as I look at where there will be new fruit trees in a year, or maybe two.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:8

Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all the earth.
Sing to the LORD, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day. Psalm 96:11-2