God's Plan

I had a friend named Ernie, when I was 20, who was several years older than me. I enjoyed Ernie because he often asked philosophical questions of me that really made me think. One afternoon I had dropped over to talk and he said. “Michael, what is it you really want to do with your life? Do you have a plan for your life?” I thought for a minute and I said, “I want to be able to go anywhere, and do anything with anybody.

After a few seconds Ernie looked at me and said “It sounds like you want to be like a sailor who sails the world with a girl in every port.” His response was not a surprise because Ernie and I often talked about girls. “No Ernie”, I said, “It’s bigger than that, I meant it exactly as I said.”

There is a creation myth that tells us how before there was anything, there was only Oneness. In the myth Oneness is alone. There was nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to do it with? So Oneness thought, I will make a plan, I will create an endless universe of infinite wonder and fill it with beings of infinite curiosity. I will endow each of those beings with the power to create unlimited possibility. I will create a game of hide and seek and hide myself in every corner of the universe and in every being in the universe. I will pretend that each of those beings is not me. I will make love and connectedness the goal of the game. And to make the game seem absolutely real I will forget where I have hidden myself. The game will play out through eternity until all the pieces, through seeking love and connectedness, have again found that they are all just me playing a game of separateness with myself. Then I will not feel alone.

Several eons passed and Oneness thought, what if I make a mistake?

Several eons passed and Oneness thought, if all is Oneness and Love there cannot be a mistake.

Several eons passed and Oneness declared, "Let there be a universe where I can go anywhere, and do anything with anybody."

Several eons passed and it was so.

 

~Michael Jenkins