In these apparently chaotic times, I, like many people, have been wondering: where is this all headed? We appear to be in truly transformative times, for better or worse, and it is easy and understandable to fall into despair from time to time, given the overwhelming rate of societal change and the sheer volume of our personal and collective conditioned beliefs that are up for reevaluation at any given time. Challenges abound.

I choose to believe that the universe has a direction and a purpose. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said “the arc of human history is long, but it bends toward justice.” He was paraphrasing Pastor Theodore Parker from the mid-19th century who said:

"Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of [that which is] right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble."

He was right. Just a few years after he wrote that, the Civil War broke out.

I think the idea of the arc of the evolution of the universe is correct; if we broaden our perspective and look at the arc of the history of creation, as we currently know and understand it, we can see patterns and cycles which point toward an evolution toward something. We see self-organizing systems that arise when the conditions are just right, conditions that are inherent in the nature of the constituting forces of the universe. We see organisms (from species to societal structures) change, adapt, transmute, as conditions change. Mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, writing about the same time as Reverend Parker, said that “the teleology of the universe is to create Beauty.” Teleology means purpose. The purpose of the universe is to create Beauty. Perhaps Beauty is the ‘strange attractor’ which calls creation forth in all its complexity.