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even years ago at the end of an exhausting day at seminary and at the end of Church History class, too tired to govern myself I came out as so liberal I do not believe in Hell. I’d been verbally backed into a corner by a conservative male student who challenged me, “Don’t you believe in Hell?” with a tone that suggested I was stupid. Out loud I said, “No,” matching his tone. Then an internal conversation struck up inside me that began with, “Oh, hell…what have I done?”

As I walked to my car that night, I looked up at the great big, brilliant, star filled sky – the place I can go to and feel my deep, intrinsic God-connection and asked, “Do they ever just look up at the night sky? How does anyone look up at the stars and not feel insignificant…how do you justify only one world view when you take in the night sky?”

 I had the same feeling watching the movie “Chasing Mavericks” today. Up close, the film makers made surfing look as beautiful and sensual as ballet, though the dancing pairs were humans and ocean water. At a distance, though, the surfers looked so small and insignificant, even as from their perspective they were one with their boards, the water, the waves, the sun, gravity, and every part of their bodies maintaining balance on their boards on top of that water. Surfers must have a sense of the planet and of themselves in relation to the planet that the rest of us don’t have.

Gerard Butler has said in interviews that we think of surfers as arrogant when, really, they’re quite humble. I believe that humility is found, in part, in the tension between accomplishing something of such great significance in partnership with an ocean that consistently reminds them they can be broken in two and taken out of this life in an instant.

When I look up at the night sky, I feel a tension between how significant I feel because of that intrinsic God-connection that swells to the surface and how insignificant I feel standing on a planet that is one of those billion and more lights in the sky.

The sense of God as deep inside, closer than the breath, alongside the vastness of space that separates us from God Almighty is just one of a million or more mysteries that come with living on this planet. I still choose the tension of living inside the mystery over believing I have it all worked out.