There is no Random

IC XC
✙
NI KA

You are in a desert. All around is silence, wind, sand. Dawn. As you grow accustomed to your location you realize all is not silent: there is the wind. And more: near the very edge of silence is the tinkling of the grains of sand. Look at your feet. For a few centimeters above the surface, the air is filled with blowing grains of sand. It can seem random, but each action of wind and sand is governed by untold numbers of vectors of wind, weight, and which grain is on top. Even the presence of your feet makes changes to the way things move. What seems random is governed by gravity, wind, and other things seen and unseen – even the growing light of day warms the surface of the ground. Is a given grain of sand turned to catch more or less light? More or less wind?

You reach down and grab a handful of sand. You are not governed by wind or heat and grab a random sand handful. It falls through your fingers, the grains joining their brethren, blowing through the wind, and returning to the dance above the ground. Your actions have changed the dance but everything is still in harmony.

Now do it again: take up a hand of sand and let it fall. But this time, as it falls, use your other hand to take a pinch of sand to save it. Entirely freely chosen and all at random.

And now I will tell you a mystery: the pinch of sand you hold, freely chosen, at random from all the falling sand in your hand, a handful picked freely and at random from all the blowing and random sands of the desert… That pinch was willed for you by God from all eternity. It is no less a part of the dance of sand than any of its brethren at your feet. You freely did so and here you are and God has met you.

And the same is true of all else: for who put in place the laws that decided which sands would blow and which ones would not, where the winds would rise, and how warm would be the sun? Who brought the desert to be – and you to be? Who is the cause of all causes?

This is the mystery of life: but we can take it out of randomness into the realm of faith, which means not “make believe that…” but rather “trust that…”