Law of What Needs to Happen First

Law of what needs to happen first

--before the next thing

--before the miracle

--before more pain

--or more joy

Where is God in this sequence, at each juncture?

Lately I’ve been mulling over an existential story I’m working on writing. And in the midst of existentialism I came up with my own Einstein theory=the Law of What Needs to Happen First.

We all have at one time or another questioned God, gods, or the universe. When confronted with evil, injustice, the ugliness of humanity. There are never any easy answers. Even the questions are difficult. So hard in fact we begin to wonder if there is a God, gods, or comic book heroes that control/avenge the universe. I mean if there were such mythic being(s) then WHY? Why do certain things happen?

Of course we never seem to ask why good stuff happens. Maybe because we’re too busy being happy.

Anyway holding the baby of a friend who had joined the community, left, divorced (like a double divorce analysts would say), who went through his own personal hell before finding a great gal, truly a best friend and wife. They married a few years ago and now have 2 sons, one a newborn. Holding him recently I imagined God over my shoulder saying to said infant: I knew you when your dad was in a commune and married to his first wife, God bless her, I knew you before his “lost” years.

Like Job of the Old Testament, we need to keep in mind the Law of What Needs to Happen First. Before the baby was the second marriage, and before the second marriage came the hard time, the loneliness and feelings of abandonment. He could blame himself, he could blame his ex. He could blame his parents or the church or even God. In the depths of despair Job did all of the above, plus plus. Without the Law of What Needs to Happen First we cannot begin to understand the second law, the Law of What Needs to Happen Next.

Maybe this will explain better what I’m trying to say. Marina Keegan was a promising 2012 graduate from Yale, getting a degree in journalism and writing. If anyone needed the Law of What Needs to Happen First it would be today’s young graduates—especially one getting a degree in the Liberal Arts—because the Law of What Needs to Happen Next is lookin’ pretty scary. No one knows what’s going to happen next except that surely something is GOING to happen next.

Unfortunately for Marina Keegan she was killed in a car crash days after graduating. But she left us this  her last essay. The world is full of possibility, and the Law of What Needs to Happen First.