Celebration of Man at The Burning Man
- Drew Goodmanson
- Apr 24, 2004
- Series: Other
Discuss this article in the forum
There is something fascinating with The Burning Man. I know I'm not alone because nearly 40,000 people attended this year representing every U.S state and nations around the world. The Burning Man is an annual celebration held in the middle of a desert called Black Rock. The “Burning Man is an annual experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance.” Each year the number of people attending grows as they gather to celebrate man.
Every year Burning Man has a central theme. This theme comes to life in the middle of the desert as a temporary city is erected to reflect it. Past themes have included Fertility, Time, Hell, Outer Space, The Body, The Floating World and Beyond Belief. All of these themes celebrate mans expression in the vast universe and end with the burning of a large wooden constructed man on Saturday night, the sixth night of the event.
The Burning Man is a movement of ordinary people, naturalists, wiccans, party-seekers, new age spiritualist, hippies, existentialists and others who are often attuned to matters of philosophy, spirituality and reason. These are the people who are seekers, people who face the questions of life that many in our consumeristic society pay handsomely to be distracted from. The festival centers on answers to these questions without the dogmas of organized religion, theism or God they begin with individual experience.
      |
During this year's theme, The Vault of Heaven posed a series of questions listed on the ‘official website' including: Where does everything come from? Where does everything go? And where and how, in this vast scheme of things, do we fit in? These are the same questions that all mankind faces, wrestles with and longs to understand.
From the website they provide their explanation:
Scientific theory tells us that the energy that now pervades the universe was once compressed into a single point without discernable dimension. Time and space did not exist; no then was then, no there was there. This means that once this "singularity" began to grow it happened everywhere and nowhere all at once. The density and temperature of this extraordinary state, we've been informed, were infinite. But recent theories now suggest that this may not be true, and very different states may have preceded this event. Hidden beneath its "event horizon," a world may once have existed in which space was infinite, matter scarce, and temperatures extremely cold. Yet, whether we choose fire or choose ice, all scientists agree that it is possible to trace things backward to a kind of natal point, an instant out of which all time and space sprang into being. Evidence makes clear this was a very violent birth. We call it the Big Bang.
Here is modern man's best answer to a question of how we came to exist. The Burning Man answers that we came from nothing + time + chance = YOU. Even though they tell us that ‘all scientists agree' that we can trace our roots back to this natal point, it never seemed to make sense to me how something (infinite, matter, and cold temperature hidden in an event horizon?) always seems to exist as we bang out of nothing? Where did these things come from? Wouldn't the real beginning need to explain how these things began? How did they get there? Theories that begin with a bang from nothing appear to provide facts but they only bring up more problems than they solve. But it is important for us to recognize the answers to these questions because they directly impact these people's beliefs about our purpose, meaning and value as human beings.
The bottom line is thousands of people agree with these illogical statements. They readily accept that we truly came from nothing (of course with a little something hidden in an event horizon). It is only fitting that Larry Harvey (founder and chief spokesperson) told a journalist that the Burning Man "Representing nothing, the Man becomes tabula rasa: any meaning may be projected onto him." In the eyes of these thousands man has no real meaning because we are nothing but dust particles that can only have value if we fake it and project it onto ourselves.
I believe as part of our human-ness we want to believe we mean something more than being the result of chaos. Often Christians don't provide an answer to these people in a way that addresses this longing. When we see people who are ‘free spirited' it is easier for us to judge them and if we get the chance let them know they are ‘sinners'. While it is true that we are all sinners often we skip the common bridge that can connect us to our listener. Man has meaning, we were created by an infinite and personal God and we were made in God's image.
Think about that for a moment. This is pretty intense, particularly for so many Christians that solely focus on man as a sinner. God made mankind in His image. We are not chance, we are not animals governed by instincts unable to express feelings of love, to create works of beauty and art. Man is like no other created being on earth.
Our God is not just the god of eastern mysticism, a panthiestic force who is uncaring or unable to understand us. He is both infinite, existing before anything else He created all matter, organized the universe and provided us meaning in our life today as well as hope for an eternity with Him. He gave us this hope because He is personal. God knows us, He has come and lived amongst us and experienced the pain, suffering, joy and all the emotions of living. God held us up to such a high value that He was willing to die on a cross to reconcile His infinite, perfect justness so that we can have peace with God.
As people struggle with understanding their identity as humans, only the God who gave us the Bible allows us to be truly created with value. We can celebrate because we were created in God's image.
0 Comments | Login to Post Comments