Quetzalcoatl Always Returns

By F. Lee Ring

Rufino Tamayos Quetzalcoatl......Soon to return, December 21, 2012.

In the beginning there was Chaos; the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. In the midst of Chaos the great Leviathans Marduk and Tiamat met for battle. For eons they wrestled in an eternal struggle for life and death. In a magical moment of opportunity Marduk impaled the belly for Tiamat and her life spewed forth into the Chaos. Seizing the opportunity to end the conflict for all time, Marduk slammed closed his jaw upon the neck of his rival. Her blood flowed from her veins and as her blood intermingled with Chaos, the earth was created. And the earth was no longer without form and void; and darkness gave way to light upon the face of the deep. Therefore my children, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This is why, even to this day; before we enter the Temple of YHWH we first give recognition to the Cauldron of Chaos. Remember my little ones from whence we came, Chaos. FLR

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Is Chaos necessary in life? If it isnt then perhaps it should be. Everywhere we look; our life, our family, work, the world, even the images on the screens in front of us become seemingly more complex every day. The litany of people, governments, and institutions facing chaos could fill the clouds and still have no end; and for my sake and yours I will not attempt to finish the list. Please give me a call if you ever find the last entry. We all know the familiar Hollywood lines mimicking our unspoken and spoken thoughts: Why cant we just get along and live together? Why does life have to be so damned hard? I just dont know what to do anymore? Personally I sometimes feel like the only way out is the Howard Beale solution. I have been there many times before; reaching the end as well as a new point of demarcation. With a reawakened primordial energy the voice inside me demands, 'I'm a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!' My personal existential moment of release is nigh as I go to my imaginary window to the universe and scream - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' I get up from my sofa, throw open the sash, and yell once again, 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Yes, yes, yes there it is, a crack in the fabric of the universe. Lewis Carrolls Alice orchestrates the unfolding of an altogether new reality within which the outstretched hand of serenity reaches out to greet me. Yes, yes, yes I have found it. I have been enlightened, I have been saved. Yep, I have been there before on several if not frequent occasions, but eventually I wind up at the crossroads again. Pick in hand, I get down on my knees and wonder what went wrong; fretting with sweat of blood whether my decision at the last junction was once again a dead end. The miasmic voice of Beale beckons me to speak the incantation to break the fetters of hopelessness and frustration.

Eventually even Beales voice wanes in its ability to bring about peace in my life. When all else fails I find my face in my pillow in the unknown hours of the not yet morning. I see myself crying out to the universe, to every name of god imaginable, hoping that the real one will answer, Help me, please??? Help me, please What would I do if there was an answer from somewhere out there? The exorcism of chaos from my life would now be complete. I am now assured that the will of God is at one with my will; and I am at one with the will of God. Peace and serenity are finally mine. My fingers reach out to the marvelous stem which has the ability to stop chaos from interrupting my newfound reality. Once again the eternal force of habit presses them down on the alarms stop button, awakening chaos to ever so slowly creep back into my life. Why must I have chaos in my life as Nietzsche demands? The solution is simple. My parents had the solution just as your parents had the solution. They always had the correct explanation just as their parents and their parents before them. I can still hear those magical words which for a long time were the center and the conclusion of almost every adolescent question. It is one way or the other part of our universal consciousness and memories. It reads something like this: Hey Dad, can I borrow the keys to the car tonight? No! Why not Dad? Because. Because why? Because. Because why? JUST BECAUSE.

See, we have discovered the answer to all the questions in life as well as in the universe. It is just because. You can close your books now and go home and play, because it is just because. Hell, didnt you listen to your parents? No wonder you are so screwed up, no wonder I am so screwed up. We couldnt understand the simple truth that the heavens have endlessly screamed out from the mouths of our elders, politicians, priest, religions, gurus, and saviors. It is just because. Ask no questions; still your mind; accept things as they are; be still and know that I am Lord. Just accept things the way they are and ask no questions and I will tell you no lies. You can trust me, I sell timeshare. Little wonder there is so much confusion and chaos in the world. Maybe the father of existentialism was right; maybe we must have chaos in our lives. Maybe we must have Marduk and Tiamat ever struggling; fighting eternally for the moment that chaos would cease. Will the blood of victory ever spill into the void and create something altogether new, or will the unrelenting struggle exhaust both leviathans until they are dead? If they die, then they leave us without hope that they will once and for all put an end to chaos. If the mighty are felled by their struggle over chaos, then how can we mere mortals hope to prevail in our wrestling with the eternal enemy? Where will we find these ceremonial words to say at its final resting place, Chaos is no more. May you rest in the same peace that you bestowed upon us. Just as with Marduk and Tiamat, chaos is the catalyst for the cycle of creation, life, and growth; it also can be the beginning of the spiral of death. When chaos comes into our life, just like being at the crossroads, there are eventually two different directions that can be taken. Darken the room of a 12 step recovery meeting and ask anyone who has taken the first step if this is true. As with the addict, chaos can and will increase to the point where it overwhelms us to the point that our lives become unmanageable. It is at this tipping point that the choice for the next part of our journey is to be either on a path that leads to a Genesis experience or it is one that chaos continues to exert its grip upon our life.

Eventually chaos stranglehold forces even the strongest of leviathan to succumb to defeat and eventual death. This life and death drama happens not only in humans, but also in everything that surrounds us. You ask me why? It is BECAUSE. It is because of the order of things; it is because of the laws of physics. But before I start using words that could scare you off from the rest of the story, let me first tell a short story about my earlier days. In a previous life I wanted to be a theologian, a writer, a philosopher. I wanted to be another Martin Luther or Soren Kierkegaard. During my early seminary years, every time I came across a word that was unfamiliar, I would not only read its definition, I would read the definition of every word on the page. Late one evening it happened. There on the page was a word that I absolutely had to know, supralapsarianism. It just so happened that it was an ethical/theological concept concerning God foreordaining the fall of man. The following day in ethics class there was a discussion about whether the onus for sin was upon God because He foreordained that man would sin; or upon man because he actually did. I immediately raised my hand and said, Sounds like supralapsarianism to me. You could have heard a pin drop in the class. Needless to say, my reputation on that campus was made that day. Now I bring up supralapsarianism which has little to no consequence in my life, so we can discuss a different law that does have a considerable amount of influence in my life and yours. It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It is now time to take a break, have a cup of coffee, and call your best friend and tell them you are reading a book on physics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, a/k/a the Law of Entropy, states that the overall amount of randomness (chaos), or entropy, in the universe is always increasing. It is little wonder that we experience so much chaos in our lives. It is

because it is a law, right. For example in a car engine, the amount of entropy is always increasing until at some point the engine breaks; and we either have to replace or repair the damaged engine. With all of the technology available to us, no automotive company has ever been able to manufacture a vehicle that will not eventually fail. Personally, from my experience with the auto industry, they seem to preplan chaos into their vehicles so that entropy reaches its zenith just a few months after the warranty has run out. Or better yet, take an interstate interchange in a growing city. If you live in a metropolitan area like Atlanta, where I spent over fifty years of my life, you can identify with this application of the Law of Entropy. The cloverleaf interchange where I-85 met I-285 was a marvel of highway engineering when it was first built in the 1970s. It functioned well until the chaos of increased traffic made it a nightmarish bottleneck as Atlantas population continued to skyrocket. It wasnt long before drivers would rather be shot with hot cracklins rather than attempt to drive through the intersection during rush hour. The Law of Chaos reigned supreme as the bottleneck persisted and the aggravation increased with every passing year. If the bottleneck persists, then over the course of time the traffic will migrate away from using the route associated with the cloverleaf interchange. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the ever increasing randomness, the chaos, will ultimately cause the interchange route to fall into disuse. At some future point the interchange will fail as a useful transportation route. In essence, it will die. The businesses and the communities which sprung up around the interchange will also ultimately wither away as traffic seeks out a less chaotic path to take. Just take a look around at the areas in your state that are dying or have died when the insanity of rush hour traffic forces changes in the routes that people take every day. Chaos and the Law of Entropy leave little room for hope. However, why do we observe increasing orderliness in some things, in some systems, and even in our

own lives if chaos is always increasing? The answer came in the concept of Open Systems for which Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He demonstrated that open systems maintain and even increase their orderliness and complexity by dissipating entropy, chaos, into their environment. I wonder if he had the Babylonian creation story with Tiamats blood spilling into Chaos when he came up with his idea. Whew........ In other words an open system constantly exchanges energy and matter with the outside environment and has the ability to constantly adjust itself to environmental conditions. This begins the creation and life of complex systems as he called them. Complex systems maintain their level of complexity through their ability to dissipate chaos, or randomness, to their environment. What in the world does this mean for me? A cup of Starbucks still cost me nearly five bucks. Take the case of the congested traffic and the Atlanta interchange. Traffic snarls soon became unmanageable and no one had any control over it. In order for this complex transportation system to be able to maintain itself then there must be a transformative event to dissipate the chaos into the environment. This could come about by the building a sister interchange or widening the existing one. It could also come about by reconstructing an altogether new and improved interchange. In either event the system, the interchange, generates into a new and more complex system. At some point in the future even this new creation, given the ever increasing amount of chaos, must once again dissipate the chaos into the environment and become a new creation. When the old cloverleaf at I-85 and I285 was reconstructed, Spaghetti Junction was born. Only a short time passed until the Law of Entropy once again reared its ugly head much to the chagrin of Atlanta commuters. There are a multitude of parallels for the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the concept of open systems to our own life. If I am bombarded with entropy and chaos, I lose control over my life and it soon becomes unmanageable. Then I must

dissipate this chaos into the environment and be recreated; or I must let entropy play its ultimate role and thus I must die. Time and again I find myself, pick in hand, at the crossroads looking for the next horizon. Was there a lesson for us in physics when Jesus replied to Nicodemus, Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. If we chose life and growth then the Second Law of Thermodynamics along with the concept of open systems require us to be born again, and again, and again, and again. Why? Because, when we no longer embrace entropy and chose to dissipate our chaos; we then become transformed. Old things pass away, behold we are altogether a new creation. Indeed, we must still have chaos in ourselves to be able to give birth to dancing stars. Dancing stars which are you and me. I wonder what Marduk and Tiamat would think of that.