How Faith Is Like Special Relativity

This morning I read in the Magnificat a whole passage from Psalm 97, but the particular phrase that struck me was this:

Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

I had just been looking at the heavy, gray, low-hanging rainclouds outside which are usually so depressing for me. So, it was surprising and helpful to realize that, rather than being a sign of God's absence, those very clouds signified His presence. 

A little later on in today's readings, I saw a familiar passage from Romans 8, particularly these verses:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words... We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. 

--Romans 8:26-28

I always think of this passage as St. Paul's encouragement to Christians who find themselves overwhelmed with their circumstances. First, he says that the Holy Spirit Himself is with us, and helping us to pray, especially when our fatigue and perplexity leave us without words. Then, St. Paul reminds us that all things ... not some things, and not most things, but all things work together for our good.

Later on in today's readings in Magnificat is a short exhortation written by Pope Benedict XVI, which I thought was especially on point for me:

The first thing should be that God is present in our life. The sums of human life don’t work out if God is left out: all that remains then is nothing but contradiction. So we mustn’t just believe in some theoretical way that God exists: we must consider him to be the most important and real thing in our life. As Scripture says, he must penetrate every layer of our life and fill it completely: our heart must know about him and let itself be moved by him; our soul; the power of our will and decision; our intelligence. He must be everywhere. And our fundamental attitude towards him, our fundamental relationship to him, must be called love.

Often this can be very difficult…. Often assent to God seems almost impossible. But those who abandon themselves to this rebellion poison their lives. The poison of negation, of anger against God and against the world, eats them away from within. But God wants from us as it were a down-payment of trust. He says to us: “I know you don’t understand me yet. But trust me: believe me when I tell you I am good and dare to live on the basis of this trust. Then you will discover that behind your suffering, behind the difficulties of your life, a love is hiding. Then you will know that precisely in this way I have done something good for you.” There are many examples of saints and great people who have dared to have this trust and who have thus found true happiness—for themselves and for many others—precisely in the greatest darkness.

I was particularly struck, moved even, by the sentences that I highlighted, and especially by the notion that God is asking of us a 'down-payment of trust'.

Here's the weird analogy that came to mind this morning. As you may know, Einstein derived all of Special Relativity from two postulates:

• The laws of physics are the same in all inertial reference frames.
• The speed of light is the same in all inertial reference frames and is not affected by the speed of its source.

In a way, St. Paul and Pope Benedict offer us a view of reality that is just as unexpected as Special Relativity was, and like it, is derived from a handful of postulates, namely:

• God is all good, and desires only our good.
• Our ability to receive the good which God intends for us depends on us always being ready to make another act of trust in Him and His ability to act.

The second point means that all circumstances, whether they are the result of our choices or of the choices of others or from 'acts of God', can still lead to our good if we entrust those circumstances and ourselves to God.It seems to me that if we can embrace these postulates through an act of faith, then they enable us to respond to God's graces, and eventually to understand what He is doing in our lives.

Being nourished by doing God's will

In today's Magnificat morning prayers, there is a passage from Psalm 119:17-24 which speaks of the psalmist's desire to know God's commands and to do God's will. The preface for this passage introduces this reading with another brief passage from John 4, which is part of the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well:

Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has any one brought him food?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work...."

That got me thinking about the difference between the way Jesus experienced doing his Father's will, and our own experience, which often is much less enthusiastic about doing the Father's will. For some reason, I then thought of a very interesting comment that I heard many years ago in a talk by, I believe, Ralph Martin. In this talk, the speaker was recounting his experience in learning to ski. He had basically taught himself to ski, but then later in life had the opportunity to get a lesson from a genuine skiing instructor. He was amazed at how difficult this was. The problem was that he had taught himself a number of incorrect techniques, which were quite limited in what they could accomplish. If he wanted to learn the right way to do those things (such as the proper way to turn), then he had to un-learn all of the bad techniques, and replace them with mastery of good techniques. He was also amazed at what a difference learning the proper way to ski made, and how much easier it was to ski faster and more flexibly.

What I heard the Lord say at this point is that our response to doing the Father's will is much like that. Growing up in a broken, fallen world, learning from broken, fallen parents and other teachers, we have learned to do a lot of things, but we have learned bad ways of doing them, based on fear and selfish impulses. Because of that, when we finally hear what the Father's will is, it seems painful and hard, and counter to what we naturally want to do. But if we had learned from the beginning the proper way to respond, then we too would experience doing God's will as being nourishing and energizing. 

May we all come to experience what Jesus did, that our food is to do the will of Him who sent us, and to accomplish His work! And may the Father give us the courage to unlearn the old ways we have of living, and learn the new ways that Jesus came to teach us.

On the Crookes Radiometer as a metaphor for our relationship with God

This is a typical example of a Crookes Radiometer. Inside a partially evacuated glass bulb is a needle, on which rests a set of vanes mounted on a very low friction hub. The vanes are white or shiny on one side, and black on the other. When you place this device so that it is illuminated by bright light, particularly the light of the sun, then the set of vanes spins merrily away, in the direction of the white or shiny sides. This Wikipedia page explains the origin of the device, and lists several different possible explanations of how it works. The short explanation is that each of the vanes acts as a tiny heat engine, converting incoming electromagnetic radiation (primarily infrared and visible light) into motion through subtle thermodynamic phenomena occurring right at the surface of the black side of each vane.

I have always been fascinated by these devices, and all the more so as I have gotten older. Besides the intriguing and unexpected physics of these devices, I have also found them very cheering to have around, especially on a sunny day in winter. It is strangely satisfying and uplifting to watch the vanes of a radiometer spinning furiously in bright sunlight. It can be, however, a bit subduing to watch the vanes spinning very slowly on a hazy day or very late in the day as the sun goes down, and even depressing to see them sit motionless on a gloomy day or in a room this is only moderately illuminated. 

About 6 years ago Mary and I decided to replace all of the windows in our house with top-of-the-line Anderson windows. The new windows greatly reduced our energy bill, both in winter and summer, which was what we were looking for. One of the primary ways the windows achieve these savings is through a slight tint, which allows very little infrared and ultraviolet to pass in either direction. However, one unintended and unwanted side effect of this blockage of light was that all of our plants began to get sickly. Although the diminution of light was so slight as to not be noticeable to the eye, it nonetheless had a big impact on our plants. It took Mary a while to find out how to position the plants so that they could still get enough light to thrive. Another side effect that perplexed and depressed me was that the new windows also blocked so much incoming solar energy that the radiometer spun very listlessly even on an apparently bright sunny day. You can visibly see the difference that the glass makes by simply sliding a window open so that direct sunlight passes into the room through the window screen alone. As soon as you do this on a bright day, the light instantly stokes up the radiometer vanes into a blur of motion. But the vanes go back to their half-hearted spin when you close the windows again.

One of my quirky predilections is an obsession with analogies and metaphors. (This is a very old interest, and it would take a while to explain how I got this way.) As a result of this obsessive tendency, I often notice analogical parallels between physical phenomena and more abstract ideas. It is surprising the turns this can take. All of the above is a long-winded prologue to an explanation about why a Crookes Radiometer makes me think about being a disciple of Jesus.

Recently, I have been thinking a great deal about being a disciple of Jesus, and about how one becomes a disciple, and especially how one helps others to become disciples. Jesus of course also used analogies a lot in His teaching, with the best known bits being His many parables. The use of these analogies is yet another dimension of why Jesus was such a powerful and effective teacher. By telling stories that tapped into people's everyday experience and understanding, He communicated His message about the Kingdom of God in a memorable and thought-provoking way. Everyone knew what a king or a shepherd or other character in one of His parables did, so it was easy to grasp at least some of what He was saying. The stories often had dramatic or exaggerated elements (the good Samaritan caring for the man set upon by robbers, or the king who compelled guests to come to his son's wedding feast) that made them easy to remember, but there were also puzzling elements which provoked the hearers to remember and ponder the parables later, and to ask questions.

Our highly secular and material age has lost a lot of this ability to grasp things on many levels at once. We look at the world, and we just see the world. We typically do not see the many layers of implied meaning that are available in what we are looking at. So I believe that there is a work to be done by believing Christians to find new parables and new metaphors that help communicate the timeless truth of the Gospel in the situations that we find ourselves today.

Let me draw out some of the many parallels between the ingenious and unappreciated Crookes radiometer and what it means to be a believing Christian living as an child of God.

• The radiometer is designed to work on light alone. In the same way, our souls are designed by God to work on the light of His grace.
• The radiometer works best when sitting in bright, unfiltered sunlight. In a similar way, our souls are healthiest, happiest, and most responsive when they are exposed to and filled with the fullness of the light of God available through a relationship with Jesus. 
• The radiometer works because the vanes are very thin and have little mass, so that it takes relatively little force to set them in motion.  The device would not work if the vanes had more mass. Similarly, if our souls are weighed down with self-concern, it is hard for them to respond to the gentle touches of God's grace.
• The hub that holds the vanes must be free to turn with little friction. Likewise,  if we are plagued with sinful tendencies that we cannot break free from, those also impede our soul's ability to respond to the light of God's grace.
• The radiometer's operation requires that the vanes be placed in a partial vacuum inside a glass bulb. If the air inside the bulb is denser, then the thermodynamic phenomenon that provides the thrust to the vanes will be swamped by all kinds of random motions in that air, and again the vanes will not turn. In the same way, if our minds are overactive, and densely packed with the sheer number of things we trying to pay attention to, then the grace that God wants to pour out on us is drowned out.
• The radiometer worked poorly even in apparently bright light if some of the most important wavelengths of that light had been filtered out. In a very similar way, if we are operating in an environment where God's graces have been excluded by custom or law ("Don't mention God at our Thanksgiving dinner. It will set off your Uncle Frank." "Explicit vocal prayer in schools in our district is not allowed.") or where we simply cannot spend explicitly Christian time with other believers on a regular basis, we will find ourselves slowly starved of the graces that God dispenses through each other.
• Even on a dark and gloomy day, a small flashlight held close can make a radiometer's vanes spin. Similarly, even if one is not feeling God's presence, experiencing grace through the love and friendship of another believer can be enough to awaken our soul's response to grace. That friend's light is not the same as the fullness of God's light, of course, but it is the provision that God has made for you to receive some of His light when you need it.

So, it seemed to me that a radiometer might be an interesting gift for a friend who is a Christian, particularly one who is in need of encouragement, and who is also appreciative of geeky science toys. But when you give it to your friend, explain the things that I mentioned above and tell them to look at the radiometer from time to time and to remember how much one's soul is like the radiometer. Practically speaking, that translates at least to these suggestions:

• Try to make time to expose yourself in every possible way to the brightness of God's love and grace.
• Ask the Lord to help you unburden yourself of self-concern by explicitly and repeatedly entrusting your life to God's care.
• Don't let sinful tendencies, even little ones, linger.
• Try to attend to only one thing at a time, and don't let your mental air get too "dense" by multi-tasking (which is really multi-worrying).
• Pay attention to the ways that your working and living environments invisibly filter out the graces that God would otherwise be showering into your life, and try to compensate for the missing elements.
• Ask a friend to share a little light with you, if you are going through a "dark" spell, and your spiritual radiometer is spinning very listlessly, or has even stopped.

However, also tell your friend "Think of your soul like a radiometer. And if it stops spinning, see what you need to do to get it spinning again."

On Rest, Refreshment, and Recreation

This weekend I am focusing on getting the rest and refreshment that everyone needs, but which I find difficult to manage. I have to work really hard to rest and refresh myself. I wrote about this recently in a private posting, when I said:

We have been reading another book about "discipleship", i.e., about being a better disciple and helping others do the same. One of the topics that rang very true for us was the idea "work out of your rest -- don't rest out of your work". In other words, rest is not the antidote for work, but rather, work is the fruit of adequate rest. If you are not truly rested, you cannot do good work.

This morning I was listening to a podcast by Taylor Marshall, another Catholic scholar and writer to whom I have been listening a lot. In the podcast, Marshall touched on the importance of 'recreation', which of course comes from the Latin recreatus, literally, being re-created, a word that is normally used in the sense of being 'restored' or 'revived'. Marshall also quoted a proverb from Sirach:

Do not deprive yourself of a happy day;let not your share of desired good pass by you.--Sirach 14:14

This command (and it is a command!) struck me as something aimed squarely at me. Marshall went on to talk about the vital importance of finding time regularly to lay aside work, and turn our hearts to the things that can strengthen and refresh us: God, of course, but also family and friends, as well as activities and things which we take pleasure in.

I find this work/rest balance very challenging. My entire psychology has been based on doing, on accomplishment, on ticking off tasks from a list. I have never been good at taking time with family and friends for the sake of refreshing myself. Whenever I do take that time with others, I often manage to turn it into a duty, and I completely miss the fact that this is what I am doing. Moreover, I miss the benefit that taking this time should provide to me. However, it is exceptionally easy for me to see others making this same mistake, and for me to pontificate on these other people's need to recreate and spend time with family and friends. This of course is a classic case of a guy with a log in his eye trying to remove bits of dust from the eyes of others. As Mary and I learn more about what discipleship in Christ really entails, the more convinced I am about the importance of all of these little aspects of discipleship (such as proper rest and recreation) that I have previously dismissed as of secondary importance. Despite my evident hypocrisy in saying this, let me strongly urge all of my readers: Allow yourself time for recreation, for enjoying activities that you delight in.

It seems to me that sports-lovers have a kind of advantage in this regard. In our Western culture, there are many well-developed patterns for how people can engage with sports, both to participate in them and to watch them. Unfortunately, I never allowed myself the opportunity to enjoy sports. I think that this is in part because I always did so poorly at sports when I was young, and more recently because I am afraid of wasting time. The value of sharing an enjoyable experience with others never really crossed my mind until very recently.

As it happens, as I write this the annual big football contest between UM and MSU is underway in East Lansing. I am not in a position to watch this game today, but now that I am thinking about recreation as a shared experience, I am experiencing a bit of regret about missing the game.

BTW, there was a funny thing related to the UM/MSU game at work yesterday. We have about 20 software developers there in our building, including both UM and MSU graduates. An important part of our software development process is a huge suite of automatic tests that get run daily. We also have these two giant TV screens set up in a prominent place in the office, which continuously display a graphical representation of the status of these tests. If a test fails (usually because one of the developers made a mistake in their recent changes) then the box representing that test changes from green to red. Yesterday I noticed that the color scheme had changed for these test displays. One of the displays showed the test boxes as white text on a green background (for MSU) and the other showed maize text on a blue background (for UM). On a related note, I have several kids and a son-in-law who went to MSU, and several kids (plus the same son-in-law) who also went to UM. So any sports contest between the two schools inevitably results in a good deal of trash talk between the two groups.

Anyway: rest, recreation, refreshment - these are not optional for Christians. Our Lord commands them in several ways for our own good. I want to do better at understanding these activities, at making proper use of them in my life, and at encouraging the same in the lives of people I am close to.

Making another attempt on Mt. Blogger

I love to write, and I find myself taking much time every day composing and polishing bits of text. Often this is for work, but I also write emails to friends, longish documents related to my Catholic faith or to work at our church, and private journal postings for my own use. Back when I was recovering from cancer, I used to post some of my musings here at Standing Here Beside Myself somewhat regularly, but I fell out of the habit when I started working again. I made a couple of attempts at restarting the blog since then, but I guess it was not the time. Now as I approach retirement, I find that the urge to write is constant and growing. A couple of friends have noted that a lot of what I have been writing lately would make good blog fodder. So, I am going to make another attempt at restarting this blog. Here goes.

Requiescat in pace

Requiem æternam dona ei, Domine.

Et lux perpetua luceat ei.

Requiescat in pace. Amen.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord.

And let perpetual light shine upon her.

May she rest in peace. Amen.

A little over two weeks ago (Sept. 26, 2012), my mother, Bennye Ruth (Bucy) Cavnar died in Texas after several years of declining health.  On Tuesday of last week (Oct. 2, 2012), my family came together for a funeral and a celebration of her life. As a result of these two events and all that happened afterwards, my heart has been at times full to overflowing with feelings and memories. This has been a period of intense reflection on what it means to have lived a full life.

In her final years, my mother underwent a continuous and undeniable physical decline. All of us, including she herself, could see what was happening. Consequently, I had months and years to prepare myself emotionally for what the end of her life might be like. Nonetheless, when that time finally came, I was surprised by both the intensity of my feelings at times and by the odd numbness I experienced at other times. Balancing these more painful feelings, I have also been pleased, and even deeply moved, by the way my family has come together since her death.

So much has happened in these past few weeks, and I did not want my memories of this events to slowly vanish into the haze of the past. It became clear that I needed to write down as much as I could about everything that has happened. My usual approach to writing anything is to turn it into an opus magnum, giving full rein to my long-winded tendencies. Fortunately, I realized that this time I did not need to write a novel-length treatment that would take weeks and months to finish. Instead, I saw that I (and any possible readers) would be better served by my approaching this writing as a blog. Using this format would let me write about individual feelings or memories as they came to me, without worrying about trying to organize them all into a coherent whole.

The particular trigger for re-starting my blog was an emotional jolt that hit me two days ago. I received an email from one of the "family service counselors" at the cemetery where we buried my mother. There was something in that email I had not expected, although in hindsight I perhaps should have.

When my father died back in 1985, the memorial headstone over his grave had been engraved with both of my parents' names, their birth years, and the year of my father's death. However, for the last 27 years the stone has remained incomplete. All that was missing was the year of my mother's death.

The image I received two days ago in that email message showed that the stone's inscription is now complete.

When I first opened the email, it took me several seconds to recognize what I was looking at. But then I felt an almost-electric shock when I realized it was a picture of my parent's memorial headstone. As I stared at the image, I experienced a peculiar emotion that is difficult to articulate. It was the feeling you might get when you are by yourself at night, and you try to walk across a very large unlit room, such as a church sanctuary. It was the feeling you get when you hear the dark, hollow sounds of a big place that had once been bustling and full of life, but that is now abandoned. It was the feeling that a night watchman in a big museum must feel every night.

I am in no way despairing over the loss of my mother. She was more than ready to go, and I am convinced that she is even more full of life now than ever. After someone's death, people often glibly say "She is in a better place now." The fact that this statement seems glib makes it no less true. On the other hand, my mother has in fact moved on now, and she has left a very large and very empty place behind her.

---

The above is a serious, and heart-felt record of a startling and moving experience. However, I must confess something else about the experience that shows what a nerd I am. The feeling I described above was not the absolute first thing I felt when I saw the headstone image. Rather, in an amazing leap of irrelevant free association, the very first thing I thought of when I saw the picture of the memorial stone was that the dry red soil of north Texas looks a lot like the surface of Mars. As the old saying has it, the problem with free association is that you get what you pay for.

Blog Re-Initialization Complete in 3 - 2 - 1 ....

I started this blog on 10/2/2006, and continued to post to it through most of 2007. My last entry was on 11/24/2007, almost 5 years ago. Throughout that period, I had posted semi-regularly. This was easy to do, since I was on medical leave fighting off cancer. But there were issues with keeping my medical insurance (which I obviously still needed). So, early in 2007, I was able to start work part-time with a friend's company, specifically so that I could get that insurance coverage. Sadly, because of how limited my energy and stamina became, I could not devote much time to non-essentials, like blogging. My posts grew less frequent, and eventually stopped.

Today, I am in a somewhat better situation. I have been in remission for over 5 years. Even better, I have been able to drop off almost all of the medications that I had been taking during that entire time. Although these drugs had been necessary to my recovery, they also took a physical toll on me. Frankly, I am relieved to be off of them. I have also gotten a little better at conserving my energy so that I don't burn out as often as I used to. I do have to be careful, because it is easy for me to overdo it.

Because of the above changes, I feel like I can now afford to take time to blog at least a little bit. More importantly, there have been some recent events that have had a big emotional and practical impact on me and my family. I believe it will be helpful, at least to me, to blog about these different changes in our life. Also, the topics I hope to touch on may be of interest to my family and friends, at least for a while.

Let's see if I can turn a good intention into a good habit.

On Stonehenge's Location

A friend on Facebook who read my earlier post on Stonehenge asked this question:

You hinted at it, but do we have any idea why this location was selected for the building of Stonehenge?

Since Facebook's message system limits the message length, I am replying here.

If memory serves, it so happens that there is a subtle astronomical relationship between the 'standstills' (extreme rising/setting points of the sun and moon) at Stonehenge's latitude. There are 4 particular spots around Stonehenge where there are or have been markers of some kind, such as standing stones. One could use these markers to observe the standstills. The curious thing is that these spots form a rectangle. If Stonehenge had been built a few miles north or south of the spot it is on, i.e., at a different latitude, these markers would not have formed a rectangle but a non-rectangular parallelogram. Thus it appears that the original builders chose that particular latitude in order to take advantage of that fact. The amazing thing is that archaeological evidence indicates that the very first structure at Stonehenge was erected around 8000 B.C., which is basically at the end of the last ice age. So the shaman types who were running the show back then apparently already had enough astronomical smarts to figure that out.

Another factor in the choice of location is that on the Salisbury plains where Stonehenge sits has a relatively clear view of the horizon all the way around. Other places have too many trees, hills, etc. Even so, the ground is not exactly level at the site. Nonetheless, the final architect who designed the actual henge (hanging stone) structure, managed to do so in a way that the upper surface of the megalith ring is within about 6 inches of being level across its whole diameter. This is also amazing given that the builders had only the crudest of stone tools to shape the stones.

There are lots of amazing things about Stonehenge. I'm sure there are more we have not learned yet, and some we may never learn.