A Walk through the Fourth Dimension

It took a long time for this world to become what it is now.

No matter how you look at it—whether you think it all evolved via chemical processes and natural selection, beginning billions of years ago. . .

Or, maybe you believe that God did it, as Moses had documented long ago:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Either way you look at it, it took a long time for all this stuff that we find in the world, a long time to become what it is now . . . to evolve or develop from whatever it used to be, back in ancient times, to become what we have here today.

So we can comprehend that creation—whether the long version or the short version, with or without a Prime Mover— takes time. Time is, as Einstein discerned, the Fourth dimension: fourth, that is, after the first three, width, length and depth. Everything on earth has width, length and depth, being continuously reshaped by the Fourth dimension, Time.

And we see that time is the framework in which the other three dimensions do their thing, working together to make a world.

But we also notice that time destroys.

 Consider these  huge tree trunks that I encountered on a Kauai beach walk: they were once alive, growing. . . getting bigger and stronger  by day, year by year, maybe century by century.

But they happened to be growing near the ocean. After they had grown tall and strong, a powerful storm came along—a typhoon or hurricane—and washed out the soil and sand in which these great  structures were fastened to the earth. Their stability was slowly undermined. 

These once-mighty trees,  their strong roots anchored in the ground , become victims of an ocean storm surge. These once-mighty trunks and limbs topple over; they fall into the ocean.

  Then the waves, over years and decades of time, push the huge trunks around, rob them of their bark, saturate them with a constant assault of salt water and rips apart their structural integrity. 

Now these wood bones are just skeletons of what they once were, splintering  and rotting. Time, partnering with cannibalistic natural earth processes,  slowly but steadily transforms  these formerly giant structures into . . . elements, dirt, the stuff from which future trees will grow. Hey, life goes on in the Fourth Dimension. Time waits for no Tree.

Here's a thought I had while strolling: Like it or not, this is what you and I will also eventually fall prey to. Death will knock us down; earth processes will rot our flesh and leave skeletons where living flesh and blood once dwelt. The soul has fled to . . . (fill in your blank.)

Bear with me here. We tend to think about these things when our 7th decade of life rolls in like the tide. It could happen to you as it has happened to me.

But because I am human, a child of God, so to speak, I have a SouI. I know where my Soul will be going: same place where Jesus went after his death, having been nailed like a criminal to a tree. But he was resurrected three days later. I don’t know of any other man or woman in history who has accomplished such a feat.

And hey, this has nothing to do with politics or so-called christian nationalism. This is personal. Surviving death is a pretty notable accomplishment.

Maybe your soul will go somewhere, when you pass from this life, according to what you think or believe. If you can believe that you will live forever by following the One who has already trodden that path, then go for it! Join the parade of victory over death.

But I progress.

 

Here is a view, peering into what Time will do, is doing, and has done as seen while peering through these deadwood roots.  I noticed this perspective on my first trip walking southward along this Pacific beach on the east side of the  island, Kauai.

On my return trip, walking, I caught another look-see moment while gazing through that same lifeless, windblown roots entanglement. . . a natural portal for catching a freeze-frame of time, catching thereby a glimpse into the Fourth dimension . But this time, I noticed a person in the background, a woman reading. 

I couldn’t really tell, but I imagine she was reading a blog that some fool wrote about the Fourth Dimension. Or maybe she was reading the parable about not building your house on sand.

Glass half-Full