On gravity and integrity

The simplest things, the most basic, the core, the fabric that holds our very existence together is often the most mind boggling and telling. The things we have taken for granted, the foundations on which and condition that makes breathing, living, being and existing possible hides all the signs of amazing grace. Ridiculous love, hidden in design. 

 

Earth is a sphere, on which there is water, liquid, and land, solid. Water is essential to life, all life. The existence of life makes love possible. No life, no love. To love, is to already assume life. (Actually, if you look closely at creation, the precarious yet stable balance and intricate composition that makes life possible, you might be compelled to think too: No love, no life. Existence of life is evidence of love.) Thus, what is life-giving and sustaining is also love allowing and loving. How can water, liquid, that flows freely stay on a sphere, that it stays wherever it needs to be so that life may be bred from it? Hold a ball, any ball, and pour water over it. You won’t need to actually do it to know that the water won’t stick. So how are the oceans and lakes, rivers and streams able to stick on earth? Gravity.

 

But what is gravity? Where does it come from? Where does it reside? At the core, in the middle, holding everything to the centre. It is a force. It is an energy. It is self-sustaining. It exists in and is a power of all big masses. All masses, actually. Bigger the mass, bigger the force of gravity. Earth is a big mass. It has a great force of gravity. It is crazy to think that mere mass, mere matter has such amazing power and force. There is nothing simple, small, ‘mere’ about that. Sun is a big mass. Greater the mass, greater the pull. Because of its size and its great force of pull, some scientists observe and predict that we are pulled towards a little closer and closer every year. Some say, this could be our doom—we could collapse into it. God is a greater mass. God is the greatest mass. Greater the mass, greater the pull. The greatest mass should have the greatest pull. If this is true, if God is as big as he is, then we should be pulled towards and collapse into him. He should be our doom. Our safety (for now, if the predictions are true) from the sun depends on the existence of other masses and their forces that keeps us (more to less) in place, and in safety. But if God is God, unstoppable, without competition, then there should be no escape from him, nor our doom to be consumed by him. In fact, that should have already happened, in an instant, with no delays, as big as he is. But it hasn’t. Why hasn’t it? Actually, if God is truly the biggest mass there is, we should never even have existed. But we are existing. Why were we even able to exist in the first place and why are we able to continue to exist now? The problem is actually bigger and more severe and pressing that this. Not only should our existence baffle us, but the existence of everything and anything too. How is anything able to stay in its place. How can anything exist at all? 

 

Except if God himself is everywhere, he is in the east and the west, north and south. He is without and within. He is his own balancer. He holds himself in place. If we are to exist at all, if anything is to exist ever, then everything, us included, must be within him and he in us. So it is not quite accurate to say that he is “in” or “at” anywhere. He, just, is. He is the everything. He is the east and the west, north and south. He is never “at” some place in relation to us, to the world. He is within and without and throughout. Thus, in holding himself together, still, the gravity of God, holds the world in pace and us in peace, quite literally. 

 

But what is gravity? We’ve said it is a force. But it is unlike any ordinary day-to-day force that act onto some object and in some direction. Think of throwing a ball. Think of pushing a shopping. The ordinary force is inter-relationship. Almost always from one to another. But gravity is unique. It is of an entirely different sort. It is not a inter-relational force, not from one to another. It is intra-relational. It is from without to within. It is a force that doesn’t move things. Quite the opposition. It is a force that holds things together, in place, still, in peace. It is in one into oneself. The world relies on gravity to exist. Life relies on gravity to be. Humans too, but gravity under a different name, integrity. 

 

It is in integrity, by gravity, of God, that we came into existence and continue to exist. 

 

To love is to be with. Loving is being with. There is no bigger love than to be with in and out and through. God is with us in, out, and through. This is why no love, no life.

 

If this is all true. If God is with us, within, without, throughout and around us, then we are whole in and by his wholeness. Because he holds himself together, he is whole, therefore we are too. We have to be. To treat something that is wholly whole, impossible otherwise, as though it is fragmented, is disintegrity. 

 

It is intriguing how the flip side of integrity, disintegrity, is not its opposite. Integrity is wholeness, but disintegrity is not unwholeness. It is to not treat oneself as a whole. Ought implies can. Possibility limits normativity, draws the boundaries for blameworthiness. Disintegrity is not unwholeness, because we cannot be unwhole. If we can be unwhole, then there would be nothing wrong with disintegrity. It is precisely because we are whole, it is impossible not to be, that disintegrity is wrongful: it is to act against nature, necessity, reality. To treat a whole unwhole. To lead a whole life as though it fragmented is a decaying life. A life that splinters away. It is an earth that holds no water, no life. Like a cup of water poured over a ping pong, hollow, life, what is life-sustaining, giving, allowing, slips right off. A life without integrity is the same.