108 Things I Will and Won't Do, Think, Believe in 2025
Or, The Removal of Human Density
Hello everyone, and happy New Year! My birthday is in three days, so I know the first month of 2025 is nearly over. How time flies!
I took an extended break from social media and this platform. I typically remain quiet between December 15 and January 7, but this extended silent period was intentional.
I concentrated on several personal writing projects and prepared my keynote address for a special Saturday event at the Museum of the Bible. My wife and I will join Kenneth Boa, Malcolm Guite, Jerry Root, and others to discuss the value of beauty in our society.
If you live in the D.C. area and want to attend, I have six free tickets to give away. The first six commenters will receive them.
My first personal writing project combined digital writing and design. I rebuilt my website and completed the Marveling course, which is now live. Marveling is a great course to encourage your spiritual life as 2025 begins. Click over to the landing page and enroll. Since it’s my birthday week, you can—for a limited time—get Marveling for over 60% off! The offer ends soon!
Second, I began sketching a new novel—a historical fiction about David's life. I’ve always wanted someone to create a vivid film about David, but as he was, not as this feable-looking boyish figure that seems to dominate pop culture. No, I do not like The Chosen’s portrayal of David. That was a big miss for that show. Later in the year, after finishing The Misadventures of Leighton Fig, I will post a few sample chapters to get your feedback.
The next chapter of Leighton Fig will be posted on Thursday, and I'm excited to share it with you. You can catch up on the first four chapters here.
Third, I worked extensively on a new nonfiction writing project that might become a book or live here. Today’s post offers a glimpse of it. If you are a paid subscriber, you can expect to hear much about it.
There is a more substantial reason for the extended silence. Yes, I was working on personal writing projects. But writing is thinking, and I’ve been doing a lot of it:
I studied and thought about spacetime and what makes existence marvelous.
The illusion of time makes it marvelous. And that’s just one aspect.
I studied and thought about gravitational time dilation and its parallel in the spiritual world.
I think we’ve created a false dichotomy between physical and metaphysical realities. To me, they are one. Their parallels run deep and profound.
Consider how you say, “Man, I can’t believe it’s time to leave already. It feels like we just got here.” That reflects gravitational time dilation. It embodies Einstein’s energy (E) equals mass (m) times the speed of light (c) squared (2), or E=mc². Time is relative. And the fact that time is relative matters more in this world than whether or not truth is relative.
Gravitational Time Dilation = Relational Time Dilation
That’s you not wanting to leave the party.
That’s you not wanting the moment to end.
That’s you thinking about the moment over and over.
And just where did memories come from?
They are stored light.
Why can’t we go back and relive the memory?
Why can’t we retrieve the light?
That’s you in relation to another person whose combined and unified existence creates an event. And the event is {soon} the memory, soon the light.
Relational < ^ >
= Three dimensions of space and time. Spacetime.
Relational Time Dilation = Tim’s most fun writing about something since studying beauty in the works of C.S. Lewis. What’s even more wonderful is that it all connects.
Relational Time Dilation = St. Augustine
But even before Augustine, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and many others throughout antiquity knew about Time Dilation.
Well, that’s technically not true.
They knew about weight/density/ and how physical objects naturally want to be or go to their proper place.
St. Augustine - “my weight is my love.”
This means more than you know and is the hinge pin of a new way to view existence itself!
I studied and considered Augustine’s weight and the true mystery of gravity—that gravity, like time, is an illusion.
Gravity is a geometric reaction to the density of celestial bodies. {See below}
The greater a celestial object's density, the greater the geometric reaction of spacetime, which causes its gravitational draw.
Time dilates relative to the cosmic location or nearness of an individual or planet to the dense celestial body.
A black hole’s density is so massive it breaks physics. Here is where physical and metaphysical blend.
Time freezes on the event horizon of a black hole.
Light cannot escape the spacetime warping, causing the gravitational draw.
Nothing is faster than light.
Light is the cosmic measuring stick of distance.
Light transcends time.
If you could travel at the speed of light, you would be timeless.
Light has no mass.
Light is both wave and particle.
Light possesses infinite qualities that not even Einstein, Stephen Hawking, or Christopher Nolan can figure out.
Light infused primordial matter into spheres, causing compression and the forming of objects like stars and planets.
We are made of light.
Black holes eat light.
C.S. Lewis loves using the term “transposition”—the higher coming down into the lower. Maybe a black hole is a divine transposition.
The Gospels call Jesus Christ the light of the world.
John’s Revelation says there will not be a sun or moon in the new heavens and new earth, for God himself will be our light.
Light existed before the celestial objects that emit light.
Light is the first form.
God lives in the abode of light—he spoke, and light existed: fiat lux.
God is spirit and light.
Light physically illuminates the universe but is also infinite and defies the laws of physics.
What does this mean for us as we struggle in our existence?
How does light relate to time?
What is time?
Time is an illusion.
The universe is filled with celestial objects of massive density.
The parts of the universe—the vast openness of spacetime, far from dense objects render one weightless.
No density. No weight.
No density. No pull. No draw. No “gravity.” (Illusion!)
When a thing or person is weightless, what are they?
Rudderless.
Easily moved.
On earth, what equals a person’s cosmological weight or density?
My weight is my love.
My weight is my passions, desires, emotions, and sentiments.
If you want to control a person on earth, what is the best way to do it?
Render them weightless.
Remove their density.
Remove their passions.
Remove their desires.
Remove their emotions.
Remove their sentiments.
I studied and considered what is happening in our “culture” regarding digital technology {the history of digital technology began 175 years ago in the head of Ada Lovelace—a rabbit hole we will dive into soon} and media.
It is more dire than we admit or even talk about.
It is the systematic removal of human density.
The word culture is meaningless in the advanced modern world, especially in America, which saddens me.
Christians rarely think deeply about “culture” as it relates to the spiritual realities we say we believe in.
I no longer believe we live in a world of distraction. Instead, I embrace the word divert.
The former is passive and breeds a victim mentality as if it’s a mental health issue that happens to us.
The latter is a purposeful act done by someone or something to another.
I will no longer talk about or use the word distraction.
It’s time to grow up and take responsibility for our actions and the actions being done to us—and by us!— by people who want to exploit the human imagination for profit and power.
Strangely, we assist in the diverting of the imagination.
Why?
Because the imagination has lost its density.
Imagination is the organ of meaning.
What is the best way to render a human rudderless?
Remove their density.
My weight is my love.
The Church should be the first entity to be smartphone-free zones.
We say the “way we do church” doesn’t matter; what matters most is the message.
Nearly every pastor I’ve heard has echoed this silly talk, which reveals their lack of cultural awareness.
The medium is the message.
The Church has become a self-help temple for humans who only desire affirmation, not redemption and turning away from our bent state. What is the best way to remove the influence of the Church in the world? Remove its density.
The medium is the message.
I have narrowed my thinking on the physical culprit of despair.
I will save the big reveal of this culprit for another post.
Though, if you’ve followed my writing, you can likely guess it.
It possesses a geometric shape but has no density.
It contains all the known data in the world but has no density.
It keeps all the coordinates of time, geography, geometry, and cosmic anomalies but has no density.
I studied and thought about entropy and bravery.
Not self-help bravery.
But the clubbing-a-lion-to-death bravery.
The beating-to-death-of-a-bear bravery. {See note on historical fiction project above.}
Why is bravery so crucial to our existence?
What is entropy?
Entropy is the passage of time.
Entropy creates the illusion of time.
Time is the constant moving away from disorder to order from disorder to order.
Is beauty possible in a world defined by entropy?
Is entropy our existence?
«By now, you might be saying to yourself, “I think Tim has lost his mind. Maybe he should permanently stay off the internet.” Trust me, I’ve thought about it. If you have made it this far, you might also say, “I thought this is the guy who writes about beauty. What is he even talking about here?”
Many thanks for reading this post, and welcome if you are new here! In 2025, I will be cutting new trails on the frontier. I’d love it if you’d join me.
If you’ve been with me for a while, thank you for your support. A writer is nothing without a reader. You have my deepest thanks.
If you’re thinking, I bet this post is something about that next nonfiction book he mentioned at the top. Well, friend, you are right. I even put the title of it in the post as an easter egg. Feel free to post what you think it is in the comments. I may or may not confirm or deny your findings. {Smile emoji}»
Don’t stop thinking Tim! I really relate to this idea of light & density... I actually wrote an article in the same vein about how the content we often consume in the Digital Age appears holographic and illusive at best but yet the experiences we perceive still carry a great weight or ‘density’ to them; either lifting the soul upwards or weighing it down into deep-darkness. We fool ourselves into thinking the content (through the ‘light’ on our phones) doesn’t deeply disembody or affect the soul. What are your thoughts on that?
So good! Thank you for sharing, Tim. Looking forward to reading more of your writings this year. Also, the density piece brings to mind Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” and solid vs. shadow/ghost people. :)