Grayson had struggled his whole life. He could take apart and fix a TV, and he read 900-page philosophy tomes, but had barely gotten D's all through high school.
He had the biggest heart of anyone his mother knew, but any friends eventually got scared away. Grayson went through extremes and had just gone through weeks of feeling suicidal, saying he had just been left by too many friends, and even his father. And it scared her. She tried to help a lot of people, but they rarely gave to her as much as she did to them. She helped Grayson of course, but her son Grayson was the closest thing she had to a real friend.
She had just found out about "manic depression" and recognized he had turned the corner and was now in a full blown "manic episode."
She sadly watched Grayson, with her hand covering her mouth, as he darted back and forth, around the chairs and couch in the living room, talking quickly.
"Mom, I've found it." He said, "It pulls everything together. Not just science, but love and relationships and religion!!" He glanced up at her with excitement and then kept talking rapidly without recognizing her concern.
"Einstein was looking for the equation which would unify the apparently contradictory theories of Nuclear Physics with Relativity. But he was looking too small." He walked over to his mom. "He forgot to include spiritual forces." He gestured to her heart and then to his. "That's what gives us the visual model!"
He reached up and held her shoulders. She smiled through teary eyes.
"It's okay mom! I'm okay now. I've discovered it. Through string theory we've found out that the key to unifying it all has something to do with gravity. But what's the spiritual equivalent of gravity?"
He waited for her. Her eyes were open wide. She shook her head slightly.
"Love is! It's love, mom! Look--" He knelt down and started arranging things on the coffee table. "See, each of these things has a gravity." He put the remote control at one corner of the table. "That represents dad." and he pointed beyond it to the chair his dad used to sit in. "And this candle is you." He moved it to somewhere in the middle of the table. "This is me." He held up a paper he had been scribbling on and smiled at how each thing sort of did symbolize them. He set the paper on the edge of the table so it was balancing. "And here are your friends and folks from church and the neighbors or whatever." He grabbed a handful of jelly beans from a dish and scattered them across the table.
"Now picture each of these things on the table are like planets and stuff floating around a solar system. They all each have their own personal gravity, like so things don't fall off their planet. And that makes sense. We each have to run our own lives and want the best for ourselves. It's natural to be selfish, because the universe is made up of billions of selves and each self has to do their part to survive and thrive, or it would be a dead universe. The problem is when they're afraid of the pull of others' gravity on their stuff. So they try to deny their gravity, that thing in them that longs to love and be loved by all the others. These folks have made their 'love-gravity' very small." He winked and added, "Which consequentially, if they succeed, means they are making their substance-- their personal mass very small."
He glanced back down at the table. "But then some people fully live into their gravity. A bigger love. You might say they think of their 'self' as not only all the objects stuck to their planet, but also things that are being pulled by their love, including other selves. They want what's best for all the people around them, as if they know they're all one big family. All in one big gravity. They want what's best for not only themselves but other selves in their orbit. They consider them as extensions of their system, which is what a body is. You are kinda like our sun, mom. You hold us all together." He glanced up at her and smiled knowingly.
She realized right then that he might be the only one that really saw her and all the ways she tried to love people.
He looked back down. "But just like in a solar system things could be knocked out of our gravity field." He tapped the remote control off the edge of the table. "But you know what? Even if dad isn't close enough to let himself be pulled in by your love, there is still a gravity working on him. You know the big bang? How all planets and stars and space dust are all being thrown apart? Well did you know it's all slowing down. It's being pulled back together? There is a center and it is pulling us back to it. To him. All of us are being pulled back to God through his love."
He looked back up at her, panting. "It's God, mom! It's God. He has the love that longs to pull us all back together and to him. I can see myself as more than just a lone planet in big black empty space, mom. I'm in your orbit of love. I have the power to invite others into my orbit. I can let gravity do its work on me and them. Love. It's Love that pulls us. Yeah sometimes we bump into each other, and it feels catastrophic for a planet, but it changes us. Sometimes merges us to be a part of others' lives. And it's okay too if someone doesn't want to love me back, because we are all loved. Even if they leave my orbit-- even if they don't accept my gravity, my love-- we're all still loved by the source of this all. We will all be pulled back to our source who has everything we need. He pictures all of us as extensions of His Self, you could say. He wants the best for himself, but because we are in his system, he wants what's best for us."
He looked up at his mom with a huge panting smile on his face. She was smiling happy tears now. She nodded and knelt down with him. "I like it, Hunny. I love it." She put her hand on his shoulder and said, "I think you might have discovered how to make it through this life, and you should share it with people. When you or they feel alone out in dark empty space, they need to know there is always someone's gravity pulling on them. Whether its mine or yours, or their parents or friends or grandma or just God's. You could inspire them."
She slowly sat down on the couch as he watched her. She was smiling. He pushed away some of the jelly beans and sat on the table, looking at her.
She smiled a wry smile and said, "One problem: you never explained how gravity actually unifies all those theories, from atomic theory to relativity."
He smiled and said, "Mom, it's all about love. From atoms orbiting around a nucleus to black holes, everything is pulling everything together--holding everything in orbit. And that's what keeps things living, writhing, striving. Keeps things always moving. We're all moving, being pulled back to him. It's love. It's love all this runs on, Mom. It's love."
---
Who do you know that feels isolated (perhaps it is yourself)? Does it change anything if you realize God's love is as real as the gravity that pulls you to the earth, that pulls earth to the sun, that pulls the sea subtly to the moon, and keeps all things, over the huge span of time, being pulled back to God.
Raw Spoon, Friday, December 15th, 2023
