Category Archives: Religions - Page 2

Home—or a fruit remembered (but never tasted?)

Posted by on 2010/08/17 6 comments | 5,957 views

A Romantic, says Nietzsche, is someone who always wants to be elsewhere. If that’s so, then the children of the Internet are Romantics, for they perpetually wish to be someplace else, and the laptop reliably helps take them there — if only in imagination. The e-mailer, the instant messenger, the Web browser are all dispersing their energies and interests outward, away from the present, the here and now. The Internet user is constantly connecting with people and institutions far away, creating surrogate communities that displace the potential community at hand … dissolve(ing) the present away.

—Mark Edmundson, from “Dwelling in Possibilities”  in the Chronicle Review

What you have made me see,” answered the Lady, “is as plain as the sky, but I never saw it before. Yet it has happened every day. One goes into the forest to pick food and already the thought of one fruit rather than another has grown up in one’s mind. Then, it may be, one finds a different fruit and not the fruit one thought of. One joy was expected and another is given. But this I had never noticed before—that at the very moment of the finding there is in the mind a kind of thrusting back, or setting aside. The picture of the fruit you had not found is still, for a moment, before you. And if you wished—if it were possible to wish—you could keep it there. You could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. You could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other…the world is so much larger than I thought.  I thought we went along paths—but it seems there are no paths. The going itself is the path.

—C.S. Lewis, from Perelandra

In Gertrude Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography, she tells the story of a visit to Oakland, California, where she had spent much of her childhood.  After living in Paris for several decades a lecture tour brought her back home, but she records that once there, she could not find her house—her school and park were no longer there and her childhood synagogue was gone.

“There is no there there”, she famously wrote.

She came back to where she started but found nothing that resembled Home as she remembered it—this home had faded into something unfamiliar.

***

I have an idea that stretches my mind every so often, maybe more than any other idea that weaves in and out of my thoughts.  It is sometimes a thread in my happiest thoughts, though most often it comes as a piercing sense of loss or of great longing.  It is an idea—or maybe a set of ideas—about “home”.  I will do my best to tie them together.

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Freedom in discipline

Posted by on 2010/06/30 2 comments | 455 views

In the 30 years I’ve been a runner I’ve run more than 150,000 miles. Still, some of the hardest steps I take are those first few getting out the door for daily runs. –Bill Rodgers, Lifetime Running Plan

Are you drinking enough water? —my Dad, upon your acknowledgement of any feeling of ill health

Are you exercising? —my Dad, upon your acknowledgement of any feeling of ill health (if the above is answered in the affirmative).

A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity liked an armed man. —Proverbs 6:10-11

It’s been a bit of a broken week for me.  On the heels of being out of the office Tuesday to Friday last week, I was in briefly Monday, only to head to the airport in the afternoon—work stacking up  but trumped by more travel.  On top of that, my Chicago Marathon training was scheduled to start this week. Having taken time off after Boston, with the plan to let my body heal and adjust my running form, I’ve lost almost all of my hard earned fitness, am using very different muscles to run and have what amounts to a relatively short period left to prepare.

The net result is that I have learned to dread running again.  I have slowed my pace at times to nearly 2 minutes slower than my goal pace, labored over short runs, walked, blistered and bled.  My legs have hurt in muscles I didn’t know I had, and I am often back to limping down stairs again.  I just saw this morning that I have toe nails that are dying.

It’s so easy to forget how hard it is to get started.  Running 70 miles a week is easier than the first few runs after a break.

About a month ago, I also started a Bible in a Year reading program, which requires that I read 4 chapters per day on average.  I’m behind on this as well, watching my estimated day of completion slip over time and struggling to get caught up.

I realize these don’t seem like major events, and in the grand scheme of things, they are not…not in and of themselves anyway.  But, when my personal disciplines fade, I become grumpy, stressed and disquieted.  And it’s usually a viscous cycle for me. I start to dread runs more and attach too much significance to each run. I procrastinate on my Quiet Time (my Bible reflection and prayer). I sleep later than I should, my diet deteriorates and my alcohol consumption climbs. Then I start rescheduling my week (problem solving at its best), trying to figure out where I’ll make it all up.  Problem is, Wednesday’s run become 8 miles instead of 6, Thursday’s rest day goes away—and the next thing I know I’m in bed sick from late night cookies, dehydrated from one too many beers, trying to figure out if I can even run 8 miles any more!

Then I start beating myself up and/or making excuses.  In this case, I have been almost to the point of quitting on Chicago this year.
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Everyone believes in something

Posted by on 2009/08/20 3 comments | 1,362 views

Science shows us that the universe evolved by self-organization of matter towards more and more complex structures. Atoms, stars and galaxies self-assembled out of the fundamental particles produced by the Big Bang. In first-generation stars, heavier elements like carbon, nitrogen and oxygen were formed. Aging first-generation stars then expelled them out into space – we, who consist of these elements, are thus literally born from stardust. The heaviest elements were born in the explosions of supernovae. The forces of gravity subsequently allowed for the formation of newer stars and of planets. Finally, in the process of biological evolution from bacteria-like tiny cells (the last universal common ancestor) to all life on earth, including us humans, complex life forms arose from simpler ones.

—Albrecht Moritz, taken from The Origin of Life

Scientists love to ponder the statistical improbability of the Big Bang, seemingly just to see how many zeros they can crowd into a denominator. The conclusion is usually some variation of how fortunate we are that the universe was formed, that the earth is inhabitable, that life formed from quark-gluon plasma and that somehow the simplest microorganisms eventually developed into complicated animals—how fortunate we are that just like that, some 15 billion years later, human beings walked onto the scene.

I don’t mean to knock the Big Bang.  It’s a theory that both fascinates and befuddles me (though I confess I have no idea what quark-gluon is. And I can’t begin to imagine how anyone could put a date on this event!). But I must say, I think it takes some faith to swallow the theory whole. And it interests me that if a random Big Bang is as unlikely as scientists agree it is (was?), they don’t stop and ask whether it was random at all.  In fact, its very randomness makes it difficult to explain the nearly inarguable order and predictability of the natural world (the very order and predictability on which modern scientific theory is built).

Is there more of a chance that the Big Bang and evolution produced this ordered, predictable world full of complex organisms or that there is some cosmic force behind the universe that deliberately put the pieces in place and quark-gluon plasma in motion? To be honest, I just don’t know—I’m not smart enough to discount the probabilities.

I believe so many questions like this deserve our consideration.

I’m also prone to wrangle with probability of spontaneous life—that is, life willing itself into existence through the cobbling together of non-living matter in the proper proportions and sequences. Then, I wonder about the presumed serial advancements of those life-forms which allegedly culminated in man’s evolution from ape—the crowning accomplishment of the Will of Life.

Did you know that archaeology has never proven man evolved from apes?

Again, the theory is fascinating—and could still prove to be true, but as of now, it remains a theory. The Missing Link has many connotations, but none of them change that fact that no amount of digging has filled holes in the evidence that would prove the theory. Like evolution, we fill the missing links with quark-gluons and faith in the theory itself.

I think everyone believes in something—whether or not they realize it. Some may claim they are people of science, not faith; but so much faith goes into scientific theory, particularly where questions of the cosmos are concerned! Repeatable science is tough to argue against, but to me it’s (the very order and predictability of repeatable results) evidence for an Intelligent Designer. In the end, theoretical science is theory—and all theory is a way of filling in the missing links.

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