To my good fortune I still have a treasured copy of R. E. Winsett’s 1931 edition “Latter Rain Revival” hymnbook, the one my maternal grandparents used in our small church on the corner of Cottonwood and Padre in southeast Bakersfield. One of the hymns I recall from childhood was titled “God’s Radio,” and the refrain went: “You’re in touch with heaven o’er God’s radio. You can talk to Jesus, get the answer right away, There will be no static, every word He’ll hear you say; In the air above, or on the earth below, You’re in touch with heaven o’er God’s radio.”

As a preacher grandad expressed outright disdain for the charlatans’ message over the airwaves “Put your hand on this radio and be healed!” accompanied by requests for “love offerings,” but God’s Radio continued to be sung in our church. Thinking back, perhaps grandad didn’t find the idea all that farfetched, maybe he believed communication with God was accomplished in some manner like the way radios worked. After all, even in the 30s there was much of actual mysticism associated with things like radio waves and one only need listen to some of the radio programs and watch some of the films of the era to understand this seeming naiveté of the times. We were still being thrilled by Buck Rogers and fantastic things like “death rays” and such, so it isn’t surprising people would think of communication with God or the departed by means of something like radio waves. Though apocryphal, the story of Edison thinking such a thing possible to contact the departed made sense to a lot of people back then.

My reason for calling attention to God’s Radio is reading the latest thoughts of astronomers and physicists concerning our universe. There is much speculation right now whether the theories of gravity may be all wrong, or whether a rapidly expanding universe may be simply the result of the way things react to all explosions. As I put it in the comments section of one website: “The simplest explanation of explosive force resulting in accelerating expansion and lessening gravitational influence is to me the better choice without esoteric presumed phenomena such as black matter or “extra” dimensions. However, until we know exactly what life and death are, what animates and departs with death, there can be no ‘theory of everything.’ For me, this is the primary weakness of attempts to understand a universal constant. We may accept such a constant, but not be able to understand it and perhaps it will remain an ‘unknowable’ part of such a constant. I think Einstein believed this, but drew back from the potential ‘paranormal’ implications.”

It’s an oft heard expression about shooting pool: “I’d rather be lucky than good,” and Sinatra sang true in “Luck be a Lady Tonight.” People like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Donald Trump aren’t that smart, they were born under a lucky star. Astrology, the Tao, Feng shui, these and many similar things are honorable and serious beliefs among millions of the best educated people. Whatever one’s thoughts about the paranormal, things like “luck” have been a constant throughout the history of humankind. As an example of why so many continue to credit such a thing, you only have to witness how many in show business without any special talent to commend them become successful. And to prove the point how many politicians, especially those now running for the White House, have anything that really commends them to hold elected office? But luck and good fortune are properly in the domain of the paranormal with things like clairvoyance, déjà vu, telekinesis, and telepathy, things that do not readily submit to laboratory and scientific testing, verification and replication.

After many years it occurred to me that I am not a skeptic, but a questioner. It seems my often melancholy task to question things, especially things that while surrounded by an abundance of circumstantial evidence admit of no scientific proof. In discussing this with a dear friend who has had some experience with the paranormal, things like feeling she was somewhere that made her fearful without understanding why, the idea of telepathic communication with God or supreme extraterrestrial intelligences came to mind. Hence, recalling God’s Radio and wondering if “someone” is suggesting the questions that arise in my own mind and thereby preventing my becoming a skeptic, in which case I don’t really expect any answers to such questions though it seems my fate to continue reading, studying, thinking and speculating about the possibilities rather than retreating into a comfortable skepticism for some peace of mind.

It may very well be some like Newton and Einstein have better “reception” than others, their “radios” tuned to the proper frequency to receive communications from more advanced civilizations in the universe, and much like the hopes some pin on SETI are able to tune in on the “Universal Lyre.” The problem the people at SETI have is being able to scan the heavens with limited bandwidth. We know the necessity of the proper antenna being used to transmit and receive radio and other waves, we know you must be on the proper frequency when using any kind of radio to transmit and receive communications. In a similar fashion, some minds may be tuned to the proper frequency to receive information from advanced intelligences that would account for the genius of insights and “intuition” on the part of those like Newton and Einstein, even the builders of the great pyramids and the great inventors and artists like Michelangelo and Da Vinci.

One of the problems that seem to plague thoughts about communication from advanced civilizations and intelligences is the mode of interpretation of such telepathic communication whether by radio waves or other means. For example, if the prophets of the Bible were trying to communicate such things but limited by their own human understanding such things may not make any sense. It was one thing for God to tell Noah just how to build that ark, and quite another for the Apostle John to make sense of his apocalyptic visions and attempt to make sense of them in written expression. A “star map” may have been suggested to the ancients from “dwellers in the stars” resulting in a description of the constellations, and the Mayan artists may have been given their calendar but forced to configure it on the basis of their own culture. And so with the Nazca Lines, crop circles, etc. Ancient peoples did things that they neither had the science nor mathematics to do, and often seeming to have no purpose to them and making no sense to future generations. In far too many cases, some of these things became corrupt forms of religion even to the extent of human sacrifices!

In the old days of radio some of us would just turn the dial seeing what we could pick up, with TV people often “surf” channels, and today we do the same thing on the Internet. But in every case, if you really want to hear, see, or read something you have to be on the right “frequency” and stop there in order to receive intelligible communication. Dreams may be a kind of “surfing” where our minds travel unknown airwaves, but occasionally stop at something demanding our attention. There may be a sound reason in the stars for things like Joseph’s cup of divination and his ability to interpret dreams, for people like Nostradamus and Cayce, even for a Hitler and Stalin, though these latter two would at least suggest some malevolent mind than anything intent on benefiting our species, and we live with the ancient monuments in stone of both demons and angels. So, in the ways of astrologers things good and evil reside in the heavens.

This we know; the great scientific achievements of humankind have been made in a relative “blink of the eye” on the timeline of our species, and more recently things like nuclear weapons and computers that cannot be accounted for on the basis of normal human ingenuity alone. The phrase “A stroke of genius” may have more to do with what is “in the stars” than anything merely human; and perhaps God’s Radio is not so farfetched as it would seem.