The Little Book of Big Frontiers: Rediscovering the Lost Realms of Christianity
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About this ebook
The Little Book of Big Frontiers intends to make the complex issue of cosmology understandable. Vivid and ordinary stories and images are used to illustrate extremely difficult concepts that will open up new frontiers for the reader. Readers will come away with a whole new understanding of the cosmos and how it works, integrating the interior realties of the soul with the world around them, rediscovering realms that were once known to the early Christians but, alas, are now lost within the secularization of our culture.
John E. Worgul
John E. Worgul has taught biblical studies at Bethel Seminary of the East since 1987. He is an Anglican Priest serving at Christ the King Church in Towson, Maryland, and is director of Holy Trinity Lay Institute of Scriptural Studies and Spirituality.
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The Little Book of Big Frontiers - John E. Worgul
The Little Book of Big Frontiers
Rediscovering the Lost Realms of Christianity
John E. Worgul
6707.jpgTHE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG FRONTIERS
Rediscovering the Lost Realms of Christianity
Copyright © 2012 John E. Worgul. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Wipf & Stock
An imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
isbn 13: 978-1-62032-160-7
eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-983-9
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Map Room
Chapter 2: The Telescope, the Microscope, and the Hourglass
Chapter 3: The Cathedral
Chapter 4: The Pie
Chapter 5: The Cave and the Dragon
Chapter 6: The Knight and the Journey into the Interior
Chapter 7: The Super Bowl
Chapter 8: The Leper Colony
Chapter 9: The Big Splash
Conclusion
Postscript
Bibliography
To my wife, Kathy Anne,a true disciple of Jesus
Acknowledgments
I would not have written this book were it not for the persistent encouragement of my friend and student, Dr. David Waters, to put into writing the ideas on cosmology I had formulated in class over the years. David also directed me to Peter Kreeft’s book Love is Stronger than Death, which was very helpful in formulating the last chapter. I am thankful for my friends Paula Niederberger, Rev. Jason Poling, Diane Steenburg, and Fr. Lawrence Weinholt, for reading and correcting the manuscript. The imperfections, of course, are all mine.
Introduction
The Water Bugs
On a chilly December evening in 1977, I first noticed the water bugs. While sitting on a low bridge over a small stream, there was just enough light in the starry sky to make out small objects bobbing and skipping upon the surface against the slow current. Curious, I bent over for a closer look. They were bugs with long legs whose feet made what looked to be little indentations on the cold winter water. It boggled my mind that bugs could be out on a December evening, let alone on the stream’s frigid surface.
To this day I know nothing about them, not even what they are called. However, the bugs got me to thinking. For all appearances, these insects had no conception of what was underneath them. They lived on the surface. There was, at least in proportion to their tiny size, a whole watery world beneath them, to which they were connected but were unable to comprehend. The bugs seemed oblivious to this reality. Who knows what dangers lurked for them, or what delights to enjoy, just below the surface?
As I pondered this, it dawned on me that I was not altogether unlike the water bug. I too lived on the surface. At that time I was in seminary and had given my life over to the study of the deep things of God. Moreover, vivid life-changing encounters with God deeply moved and motivated me. However for all my study and experience of God, I was haunted with a growing realization that I was still a surface dweller. I could not get to where my soul longed to go. I was a tiny little water bug bobbing upon the surface; beneath and above and all around there was a far greater reality I intuitively knew was there but could not grasp.
This thought has followed me ever since. I think there will always be the water bug in me, because there will always be a sense of living on the surface before the sheer vastness of the regions surrounding me and, indeed, within me. Water bugs are humble creatures, and so should we be. Yet, we are more than a bug. The water bug goes about its short life with neither hopes nor dreams nor remorse. It lives purely by instinct. It is programmed to do some marvelous things like bobbing upon the water, surviving in the cold, hunting for whatever it is that it eats, and procreating in a hostile environment. It knows no moral failure, has no expectations, and does not have choices to make. It is locked in its own little world, and to this the bug is absolutely suited. By merely existing, it performs what is expected of it.
Such bliss is not ours. Even the most complacent souls have at least some vague sense of the frontiers beyond their front doors. We can lock these vistas out but not without great loss to our humanity. We may look through our windows from time to time and notice distant horizons, but most of us are overcome by the sheer magnitude of these frontiers and recede back into our comfortable habits of being. We might even get excited about the fact that there are unexplored regions beyond our boredom and mediocrity, but in the end we never set out to explore for one reason or another, usually fear.
The frontiers that are before us are both near and far, within and without, and they are all interconnected. As the word frontiers
suggests, they are wild and fraught with the unexpected, yes, even danger. Each one is vast; there is no clear end to them nor boundaries, like, for instance, the Pacific Ocean was for the early American pioneers. To begin with, there is the frontier within each of us, a vast expanse of spiritual space, and a universe in miniature. It is a dimension that very much mirrors the world about us, full of beauty yet permeated with corruption. Dangers lurk within, but there is also life, power, and potential. To most of us, this frontier remains largely unexplored. Yet we are bidden to take the journey within. Why should