Darwin fish and Jesus fish: complementary, not contradictory

I drove my son to his baseball game on Wednesday night.

[TIME OUT FOR PARENTAL BRAGGING: He hit a home run. He is awesome. OK, BACK TO BUSINESS]

We pulled up at a red light behind a Toyota with a Darwin fish on the back bumper.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremymiles/favorites/

“That is excellent,” he said. (My son is all about science.)

“Have you never seen that before?” I asked.

“No, I’ve only ever seen the Jesus fish ones, but that is great. It must really irritate fundamentalist Christians, though.”

“It might,” I said.

Then, struck by inspiration, I said, “Hey, I should get one of each.”

“Oh, right. ‘Cause you’re all science and story.”

“Yes! Darwin and the divine.”

“People would just think that there were two people in the house who couldn’t agree, so they got one of each.”

“Hmmm . . . You could be right.”

My son had hit on the key issue.

He’s right. People would assume conflict. We’re still shaking off the age of reason, so people would assume these two ideas to be incompatible. It’s still a reflex in our society to separate faith and science, when they are really comfortably complementary.

More and more scientists speak openly about faith without fear of being called looney-tunes for their beliefs. More and more people in churches, temples or mosques reject calls for blind faith.

Now I think I will get a Darwin fish and a Jesus fish.

I’ll place them on my car so they kiss each other.

Catching light and other interesting “wow” stuff

I’ll be flying to Halifax this weekend, so how wonderful to read in Marcus Chown’s The Quantum Zoo: A Tourist’s Guide to the Neverending Universe that the faster I travel, the slimmer I get.

Hallelujah to that. (Although, to be fair, runners have been telling us that for years.)

Chown’s book was full of other intriguing possibilities, too.

Some men (and some women) will be pleased to know that every breath you take could contain an atom breathed out by Marilyn Munroe. People working in the penthouse suites of tall buildings will learn to their chagrin that we age faster at the top of a building than at the bottom. It’s also interesting to know that a cup of coffee weighs more when it is hot than when it is cold.

My favourites, though, are these:

• Atoms are mostly empty space. Without all the empty space, the entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube.

So much for needing personal space.

• If we were able to catch up with a beam of light, we would see a stationary electromagnetic wave. This is impossible. (According to some complex equations worked out by James Maxwell.) Since seeing impossible things is indeed impossible, we could never catch up with a light beam. 

Infinite, elusive light. It reassures me to know that something out there can’t be captured, tied down and made to conform.

It makes me wonder what else might have the same elusive quality?

“As a science writer I am constantly amazed by how much stranger science is than science fiction, how much more incredible the Universe is than anything we could possibly have invented.” —Marcus Chown

The Way: a reformed atheist’s poetic struggle with elusive spirit

This photo came into my Facebook feed last week. My reaction: “I’m not making things up. I’m experiencing things that you scientists haven’t figured out how to explain—yet.

This morning I read in the paper about a University of British Columbia study that showed that faith diminished after study subjects performed analytical tasks, or looked at Rodin’s “The Thinker.”

These are timely for me, because I spent last weekend in a Healing Pathway workshop. Think Reiki, with scripture thrown in. So, I spent my weekend working with something I could not see or measure.

Now, I am someone who insists on having one hand on tangible science while the other explores the divine. When I don’t have something solid to hold onto in the one hand, it creates some apprehensions and discomfort.

Most times a healthy balance is in order. It’s not wise to launch ourselves into airy-fairy ethereal worlds without ever touching down. But I don’t believe it’s wise to ground ourselves too thoroughly in the science either, for it would deprive us of gifts of intuition.

I couldn’t see or measure what was going on over the weekend, but I could feel it. In fact, I was left trembling by it.  I decided at the end of the weekend that I had to let go temporarily of my need for the solid facts on the science side of the equation. Science just isn’t there yet, but I believe it will be some day. Should I deny myself extraordinary experiences in the meantime? Nope. So, out of my weekend experience, this poem came through me to you.

And my message to science is this: Catch up, will ya? Find the way.

The Way

© 2012 Arlene Somerton Smith

A tree waits in a mid-summer field,
shimmering elm arms stretched wide,
refuge

A speck blooms on the golden horizon,
takes the silhouette of a man,
slow

He stumbles to the gnarled grey trunk,
breathes deeply of respite and rest,
slumps

Knees drawn up, head cradled and rocking,
soul carved hollow by pain,
waiting

A figure long of robe materializes,
neither male nor female,
cosmic

At a distance the figure waits and watches
for we must ask, that is
the way.

The man looks into eyes that hold infinity,
reaches out his trembling hand,
“Please.”

Palm to palm, light radiates through the pair from
the sire universe and the birthing earth,
aglow

The man unfurls with peace and power,
receives the healing, for that is
the way

When the light retracts, hands release,
the long-robed figure recedes,
vapour

The man trembles, rises, re-arms,
resumes his journey on his path,
doubting

Along the road he meets a friend. Smiling,
and curious the friend asks, “Who was that
stranger?”

Shrugging, “Oh, that? That was nothing.”
He turns. The tree and the long-robed figure,
imperceptible

Uneasy, two men continue down their road,
laughing and clapping each other on the back,
analyzing

But a tree and a figure wait in a mid-summer field,
when needed you will see them, for that is
the way

Stephen Hawking: one totally badass scientific wonder

The folks over at Online PhD sent me their original graphic bio (below) of the life of Stephen Hawking. Everything about the man is extraordinary: his mind, his career, and his reason-defying longevity.

On their site, they write: “As you work toward your PhD, there’s probably no greater inspiration than Stephen Hawking, who received his own PhD at the age of 23. Aside from that, he’s made some of the most notable scientific contributions of our time and dedicated his life to discovering how the universe works. He’s also been confined to a wheelchair for over 40 years. He’s the longest-surviving ALS patient, a certified genius, and a total badass.”

His life makes me ponder other dimensions and miraculous potentials that defy reason.

I don’t know if he would like that or not.

Venus, Jupiter and the New Moon: a time for new beginnings

Photo by Kevin Jung
http://www.digitallearningfoundation.org/image

Has your life taken an unexpected turn lately?

Have you had a restless feeling, like you need a change? Are you itching to try something new?

If you live in Ottawa, Canada, you might blame it on our unseasonably warm temperatures—we have been having summer in the spring here, or sprummer. But if you are elsewhere in the world, it might have something to do with Venus, Jupiter and the New Moon.

On Wednesday night we attended a choir concert to watch our daughter perform. During the intermission, we stepped outside for some fresh sprummer air. In the westward sky, we saw two bright objects very close to each other, and we mused about what they might be. Yesterday morning, I read that last week, on March 15, the two brightest planets in the sky—Venus and Jupiter—converged. (Read more on www.nationalgeographic.com) A week later, on March 22, there was a new moon.

I know that scientists have debunked astrology—the National Geographic article says as much—and if I glance at my horoscope in the paper I don’t expect my day to unfold according to the short Libra blurb. But the tides of the oceans move according to the waxing and waning of our moon. If a planetary object affects something as massive as our oceans, and I am made up of a large percentage of water, it must affect me, too.

The planetary system and I are one, therefore it affects me.

The National Geographic article also points out that the Venus-Jupiter conjunction is an optical illusion, because the two planets are millions of miles apart. The conjunction is in us, not in the planets. Everything is a matter of perspective, and from where I sit I see a time of change and new beginnings. I read the Facebook statuses of my friends from the past week and I see that many of them spontaneously did something new: they attended a different fitness class, or they changed their hair. This week our circle of friends is dealing with the upheaval of the loss of our friend, Lynn.

I could ignore this feeling of renewal, or I could debunk it. Or I could seize it as a challenge.

What new thing can I do to enrich my life?

Are you feeling it? What different path do you want to travel down? What dream do you want to follow? What new thing can you do that will release the most love into the world?

How do I deal with a friend’s death?

My dear friend, Lynn, died on Sunday at the age of 47.

For the second time in a few short years I have lost a friend in their mid-forties to cancer. For the second time in a few short years my children face the double whammy of mourning the loss of someone who was like an aunt or uncle to them plus watching their close friends—teenagers or younger—deal with the loss of a parent.

My ancient reptilian brain responds first.

I rage against the injustice. “It’s not fair!” my lizard brain cries. Irrationally I tell myself that Billy Joel was right: only the good die young while the bastards live on and on and on . . .. Grief accompanies me through the day and shows itself in waves of teary eyes.

I allow myself the anger and the grief. I even enjoy them a little. Then I choose to do better.

I have other resources available. My frontal lobe allows me to choose to cherish the gifts that Lynn’s cancer journey brought to us. A life lived with a terminal diagnosis is life lived. Savoured. A terminal diagnosis cuts through bullshit: no pretenses or platitudes allowed. When the prospect of death is close and real instead of distant and nebulous, life’s priorities rearrange themselves.  It means choosing to spend time with the people who love and respect you, and choosing not to spend time with those who don’t.  It means telling people you love them unashamedly and often. It means deep, warm hugs.

“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.” —Roger Miller

Lynn balanced her awareness of her diagnosis with unrelenting hope for a miracle. She felt the anger and frustration from her lizard brain, but she mindfully sought the positive in every challenge. With determination and grace she seized her days.

I will keep Lynn close to me.

Like my friend Barry with his light, she will make her presence known to me somehow in a way that is unique to her. I will wait to see what form that takes. In the meantime, I will deal with her death the way that she lived: with grace. It is impossible to say it any better than Maya Angelou does:

Did I learn to be kinder,
to be more patient,
and more generous,
more loving,
more ready to laugh,
and more easy to accept honest tears?

If I accept those legacies of my departed beloveds, I am able to
say Thank You to them for their love and Thank You to
God for their lives

—Maya Angelou from Letter to My Daughter