In Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life we
learn of the death of a 19 year old boy, known as RL. Most of the
film in concerned with his elder brother, Jack, and the spiritual crisis he
experiences on an anniversary of RL’s death. But at the beginning of the
film we are with his mother, and her immediate response to this tragedy.
She loves God, and has been taught that ‘those who follow the way of
Grace come to no harm.’ She believes that we have to choose between
Grace and Nature, nature ‘red in tooth and claw’. But her teenage
boy was full of Grace, and he has come to harm, he is dead.
The mother questions
God, but God makes no verbal reply. Instead Malick offers us a
visually spectacular 15 minute sequence telling of the creation of the
Universe, the formation of planets and the emergence and evolution of
life. Some find this section of the film incomprehensible, or
irrelevant. Having seen and discussed this film many times I
offer this, my response to it, putting these words into the mouth of the
Creator.
******
Your child has died. This is tragic. Because you
love your child you scream and grieve and weep and rage and
question.
You question me, asking
Why?
Did I know?
Where was I?
What do you mean to me?
Let me answer you.
You conceived your child in love, carried him in hope, birthed
him in joy and pain. You were pregnant for nine
months. I waited nine billion years for life to be conceived
on planet Earth. And four billion years more before it could give
birth to you, my children, made in my own image. You too were
conceived in love, carried in hope, birthed in joy and pain.
Life itself is my Creation gift to you, and it takes
time. Just as your beloved child grew slowly, cell by cell within
your womb, my universe also grew slowly. I spoke and
the Universe sprang into existence, and then particle by particle, photon by
photon, atom by atom, element by element, grain by grain, it grew within my
womb.
My womb? Where else? There was and
is nowhere outside me, beyond me, outwith me, so the only place my universe
could be is within me. That genesis created everything you
see and know, and everything you cannot see and will never
know.
Gravity was in my left hand and randomness in my right,
and these tools brought order out of chaos, and then life out of the
inanimate. I created my Universe to live and to
bear life itself, and more – life that is in my own image, the image of
love. Giving, self-giving, compassionate, forgiving
love. Love that cares, love that hurts and
grieves. Grieves because there is no creation without
destruction and no life without death. That is the story of this
Universe.
Every atom in your body was created in the furnace at the heart
of some distant sun. Hydrogen and helium, the only atoms in
that first moment, had to be remade there, fused together under
unimaginable pressure to form oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron, calcium and
phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine and magnesium. You
need all of these elements to simply be. These suns burned
for billions of years and then they had to die, burn out, explode and seed the
interstellar space with these new atoms. Atoms that gathered
under gravity’s gentle push, gathered and clumped, formed dust clouds, then
rocks, asteroids and planets.
How many planets have to form before one can be a cradle for
life? The number would be meaningless to you, as would the
trillions of minute actions and reactions needed for these earth-bound atoms to
be combined and recombined, to mutate as randomness did its amazing work,
countering entropy by bringing order out of chaos, complexity out of
simplicity, forming chemical compounds, amino acids, bacteria, single and
multi-celled beings; all your ancestors. Some think
that evolution is not miraculous, but that is only because they want miracles
to be instantaneous. My Creation miracle took thirteen
billion years, and turned hydrogen and light into love. Is that not
miraculous enough?
You were taught that you must choose between Grace and
Nature. That is a false dichotomy. You thought
that your child could escape the dangers of Nature by choosing
Grace. But Grace needs a natural form to inhabit.
Grace needs the cradle of Nature to find a home in. And do
not presume that you are the only living things capable of Grace.
You are compassionate. You feel the pain of others. The
suffering of others stirs deep feelings, often of anger, in your
hearts. Of course you want a world where there is no
suffering. Sometimes when you see suffering you call it evil and are
angry with me.
How can a loving God
allow such suffering? They blame me for
allowing harmful as well as beneficent bacteria to evolve, or for allowing the
movement of tectonic plates to cause earthquakes. Some would like
me to temporarily suspend the laws of gravity when falling objects hurt, or when
falling hurts bodies. Some people seem to want fire that does
not burn, water that does not drown. To eat
without killing. But do you think that if I could have created you,
and your beloved children, without suffering and death being part of it,
without Nature being as it is, without your Universe being as it is, I would
not have done so?
I also have to live, like you, with the necessary
randomness that makes life possible and unpredictable.
Randomness and gravity, my necessary creative tools, mean that life is
fraught with danger. Maybe that danger makes it
precious. Would I not have spared myself the waiting, the dying,
the grieving, if I could?
If you look at Nature and hate it, and me, if you blame me and
fear me, reject me for the death and loss and destruction you see in the
world, then before you condemn me, consider this. It has
taken your kind half a million years to learn how to take atoms
apart. How long do you think it would take you to put them
back together, to create them, to create enough to make your own
Universe, and to breath life and love into your
creation? How long would it take you to make a Universe in
your own image, because you despise this one, made in mine?
Your husband is an inventor, proud of the patents for his
devices. I am proud of my devices too. Your
eldest son is an architect. He knows that form has to follow
function. Function dictates
form. Otherwise building fall
apart. I am the architect of the Universe, and it also
has a function. Love is that function; to love and to be
loved.
This Universe has become aware, and has learnt to
love. It took thirteen thousand million years for you to learn
this, in your tiny corner, but in all that time my Universe has not fallen
apart. It is well made. And just as your
child grew from its conception as a single cell, with no interference from you,
save sustenance, my Universe grew from a single moment, just one event, and
grew to what it is, with no interference from me, save sustenance. As it
is, it was from the beginning.
Oh yes, I know some believe I could create this Universe and all
living things in days, not billions of years, and make you out of
mud in an instant. They wonder why I did not make a Universe in
which there was no suffering. Maybe I could have done
so. It would be a different Universe. And in such a
Universe would you be truly human? Would you have your capacity for
costly love, for compassion, for Grace. Would you be made in my
image? Would you be so intimately connected to the whole of
creation? And could I be truly
incarnate? At One with you?
Your beloved son has died, and you grieve. How many of my
beloved have I seen die? If you believe that I love,
then you know that I grieve for your boy too, and for every living
thing. You live today in the shadow of his
death. Because I gave you the capacity to choose love and Grace I
had to also give you the capacity to turn away from them. So I too
live in the shadow of death. The death of the Cross, of the
Holocaust, of Hiroshima, of the Gulags and the Killing
Fields. I live in the darkness cast by the fear that lives in
the heart of every child, every woman, every man subjected to abuse, to
violence, to hatred. These are not my actions, but
yours.
You grieve for what you value. So add
this to the value of your boy. In him his elder brother, Jack,
found me. Found the love and trust and forgiveness and Grace – and
the creativity – that are my image. For RL, his brother, your child
and mine, lived and lives in love. All who live in love live in
me. And I live in them. In all
eternity.
Because you love your child you grieve and weep and rage and
question, asking
Why?
Because there is no other way.
Did I know?
Yes.
Where was I?
With you. Within you.
What do you mean to me?
Everything.
