Long Story Short

Editor's note: We're going to go a little deep here, and while this might be familiar ground for some, it's not very comfortable ground. I don't have any nice pictures or fun gifs for today, so, if you'd like, you can read this heart-warming post I wrote instead, which features Chris Pratt dancing at the end. 

I remember this guy asking, back in high school, if God could make a rock so big that God couldn't move it. He didn't ask it as a question in class or anything, just as one of those smartass little tricks that we learn when we first question who God is, sitting in an overfull classrooms with a 70's color palette and no windows. And it is a neat trick. Logically, it's impossible for God to create a rock that God can't move because God would be making something that proved that God wasn't omnipotent. But if God can't make that rock, then God's not omnipotent. Either way, there's no way God could be all-powerful.

It's not a question that bothers me anymore. It's so many angels dancing on the head of a pin. It's nonsensical and not useful and, though I'm no philosopher, I'm fairly certain it isn't properly framed. I'm not concerned about the status of God's omnipotence.

Or maybe I am. I remember asking, in college, if God could make a universe with growth and progress but without suffering. If God can do anything God wants, I asked, God, in God's infinite wisdom, could have come up with a better universe than this. One where humans get all the benefits of maturing without all the growing pains. My friend who I was talking to, sitting with me on the quad on a sunny afternoon fading to evening, was convinced that that's not how it works, that this universe was the only way God could have created intelligent humans with free will, which are, after all, the point of creation. God can do anything, but God's still constrained by the laws of nature. My answer at that point in my history (and to an extent, my answer now) is that if that's the case, God shouldn't have bothered.

And that, my friends, is how you stumble into theodicies or ways of dealing with the problem of evil. But no need to stumble into it if you're a theology student- you get to have classes on it! Basically, the problem of evil goes like this: if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, why is there evil in the world? Shouldn't God, as an all-powerful being, be able to prevent it? And if God, as an all-knowing being, knows what's going to happen, wouldn't God head off evil at the pass? And if God's good, why would God allow suffering¹ to exist?

You can say that God allows suffering because that's how we as people grow. If God intervened to stop every difficulty, if everything were easy and we had no problems, then we wouldn't be much more than children, not challenged to engage more deeply with the world. And I'll allow that in our current state, we do seem to need some prodding. But not this much prodding. Not this much pain. There's no reason twenty children need to die when a gunman enters a school. Surely nineteen would have sufficed. Once.

You can say that God did the best that God could. This is the best of all possible universes, as they say. God set it up as good, declared it very good, working within the laws of nature. Even as it breaks, God can't intervene too often because why would you set up the rules if you're just going to break them? So either God's power is limited or God limits God's power in order to let the universe work itself out. And while I like the idea that God would let us determine our own fates, how on earth does God sit by when God knows that all this pain could be fixed with a wave of the divine hand?² 

And besides, if you're going to lay all the pain in the world at the feet of humanity, whose sin brought brokenness into the world and whose inaction allows it to continue, I would submit that maybe God shouldn't have made the world so damn breakable in the first place. Why make a china shop and hand it over to the care of a bull? A lost, scared, confused little bull, just looking for some meaning in the glasswork and figurines that it can't help but knock over at every turn.

There's a bigger question here of how and how much God acts in the universe. Does God act within the laws of nature, sustaining everything and letting it work itself out for the most part? Did God set up the universe and step away, only interacting with it in supernatural ways when God sees fit? Is God something spiritual and undetectable, directing human souls but unable to move mountains? Or maybe God could move the mountains, but God chooses not to, knowingly limiting God's abilities because...

Because why?

Maybe we can't know. You know, maybe life is like the last chapters of Job, where we are reminded that God knows greater things and we should step back in humility and say, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know,"³  and forget Job lost everything he had in light of the fact that God gave him everything back and more and he lived to a ripe old age.

Theodicies aren't questions for people in pain. This is not something you discuss with someone who's grieving. There's a much better way to respond than, "Everything happens for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason is." And despite how angry the problem of suffering makes me, it's also not something I think the church as a whole needs to be worried about. At least, not right now. Why does God do what God does or does not do? As far as I'm concerned, or the answer that I have to settle on is, that's up to God.

What we can do, without ever answering any of these questions, is love each other. Without knowing anything for sure about the origin of the cosmos or the existence and character of God, we can feed the hungry and heal the sick and take care of the poor and the orphan and the widow. We can visit those who are in prison and give shelter and clothes to those who need it. Those of us with voices can speak out for those of us who don't. I know that today, regardless of the courses of the stars above and below me and outside of my personal knowledge of any kind of salvation, I can be kind to the stranger, supportive to my friends and attentive to my family, the lowest bars I have for decreasing sadness in the world.

Maybe God's out there somewhere, making and unmaking boulders to try to prove a point and that's where he's been this whole time. Maybe God is down here, sustaining the saints who run homeless shelters and manage food banks and teach middle schoolers.

Given, the choice, I know which God I want to believe in.

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1 To simplify my thoughts, I replace "evil" with "suffering," specifically, human suffering. I figure we can take human suffering as a test case and expand the definitions as necessary later. Also, I am so sorry in advance for appealing to school shootings in the next paragraph to make a point, but someone recently asked me how the suffering in the world outweighs the good and while I don't know if it does it does, if there's an actual way to measure suffering or goodness, I do know that there are definable pains someone needs to answer for, especially, in my mind, the people or entities that could have done something to stop those definable pains.
 ^↩
2  Jesus is the Christian answer to this problem. Jesus and the New Creation. God's not sitting idly by- God has a plan in motion for the redemption of humanity and all of creation and all the pain that we bring upon ourselves or brought upon ourselves in the Fall and it involves sending God's Son to die on the cross and bringing the world to justice and mercy on the Judgement Day. God doesn't save with a hand-waving trick and God plays a long game. 
 ^↩
3  Job 42:3. I've even got a Bible gateway link for you, if you didn't want to google. 
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With Some Help From Starlord

I'm one to believe in lessons taught by the universe, or fate, or God, depending on your view. I tend to think that for many situations, there's a moral to be found, if you're looking for it, a thing that you can learn and apply to future situations. Sometimes we, as humans, don't learn those lessons right away or we learn them, but we fail to apply them to our current situations. This is one of those second ones, I think.

It's like with music. When you're starting out, you see a crescendo on the music and you don't know what to do with this sideways triangle that's missing a side and the director stops everyone, tells them how a crescendo works, practices it, and then asks them to do it. In a perfect world, one music teacher one time would have to teach students what a crescendo means and after that, every other crescendo would start out softly and get louder over the length of the marking in the music. But anyone who's been in any kind of music ensemble knows that this world is patently imperfect.

Now, I'm aware that no one else sees me the way I see myself. That is a lesson I've learned over and over again. The world inside of my head, which contains a substantial section where I analyze how my actions and words must be coming across to those outside of my head, often follows rabbit trails that in no way reflect reality. But I spend so much time on it, I assume it must be true. I assume that everyone else sees a bold, incompetent sucker who's barely holding it together because that section of my brain that analyzes my actions only picks out the actions that support that hypothesis to analyze. I've been told that my brain is mistaken.

I think this current bout of self-doubt stems from the newness of my situation. Again, it's like music. I spent eight years taking flute lessons and I got pretty good at it. I can pick up my flute and sightread most of the music that I'd need to play, maybe spend a couple of minutes on some tricky passages, and it'll all sound passable. When I switched to french horn, I did a whole lot of learning with significantly less practice time and while at the end of those eight years, I could pretty much play anything that needed playing, I'm less confident on horn than I am on flute. The graph of confidence goes down with each instrument depending on how much time I've practiced. My ukulele skills are better than my piano skills are better than my guitar skills are better than my organ skills. I know it's just a matter of practice at this point. All the basic skills and musical intelligence are in the bank, but applying those to new instruments takes time.

So when I'm reading these journal articles and book chapters and essays, I have to remember that I need to practice reading. John and Hank Green talked about that on their podcast last week- critical reading is a skill and you have to practice, or it gets rusty. And while I have all the time management, study skills, and critical thinking down from, you know, sixteen years of school, I'm applying them in new ways and that takes practice. It takes time. I'm not going to be automatically good at it. And that need for practice doesn't say anything about my intelligence or my value as a person. It just means that I have to practice.

The kicker here is that I'm the only one undervaluing myself because of that need for practice. I'm the only one who thinks I'm the dumbest dumb-dumb to ever dumb.¹ Everyone outside of my head has been incredibly supportive, seeing things in me that I typically gloss over. And the lesson I've learned that I have to apply again here is that I should listen to them and be supported and use that to get on with my life. Let's do this academic thing.

gifs source

I am good. I am smart. And I have a lot of studying to do.

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1 This may also be due to some thing called the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which I first read about in this fabulous article about the equally fabulous PBS Idea Channel.^↩

A Boy at Starbucks

Let me first direct you to an article decrying needlessly complex language in academia, here, because it's how I feel, yo. Use your words. No, your normal words. The ones where people understand you. And don't get me started on sentence structure. Oi.

Okay. Onward to a different point.

Have some leaves and some light and be happy. 

I like working at Starbucks. I know, I know, I didn't move to another country just to have my grande mocha served to me with an accent, but it's familiar, it's comfortable, and it's got good internet and an entire floor of study space. Give me a quaint Scottish coffeeshop with ten picture windows where I can sit for four hours after I've finished my drink and I'll be there in an instant. Until then, Starbucks it is.

I'm here more than I should be, probably. At least part of the staff recognizes me. And I've learned the combination to the bathroom upstairs. I've spent most of a morning repeating it to all the people who tried the handle, pushed against the door, and stared at it like the material world had betrayed them and everything they held dear until, I told them there was a combination. And of course, there are various language barriers, so I've gotten up a few times to type in the code for them. Seemed simpler.

It's nice to be helpful, you know? While I still start when my voice comes out in that round, broad, campy American fashion, it's good that the words it carries are useful ones, making someone's life easier for a minute. I've been on the receiving end of so much help lately and try though I might, that's never going to be a life-mode I'm comfortable with, so any time I can make up that altruism balance in my life, I'm going to.

Halfway through the day, a guy came in and sat at the table in front of me and I wouldn't have paid him any attention except I thought he was someone I'd met, but he wasn't, and then he caught me staring, which was embarrassing enough that I went back to my laptop, pretending like I hadn't noticed him at all. There have to be twenty people here at any given time. I could have been staring off into space in his general direction for all he knew. I could have been staring at someone, anyone else. He could assume that there wasn't any significance to my glance, I told myself. Reasonable doubt is the saving grace of public interactions with strangers.

Anyway, this guy who I could have ignored had a friend who came in maybe half an hour after that and they started going through some science classwork. I thought for a minute it might be physics or astronomy because they were talking about absorption spectrums, but it turned out to be chemistry. Normal enough. What I wasn't ready for was overpowering nostalgia for undergraduate physical science classes, with their equations and their problem solving and their straightforward application of empirically derived physical laws. Oh, thank god, I thought. Numbers. Math. Integrals and derivatives and even, yes, fourier transforms. Give me something that makes sense. Give me something I know.

That feeling, that wanting to latch on to something concrete, is something I've heard from other people in our program. As one of my professors said at the beginning of the year, "At least with physics I can tell that I'm getting somewhere." And for me, the sciences, they're something familiar. No, I don't think it's the normal human experience to label calculus as familiar, but it's my human experience. There's something wonderfully useful and helpful about science and applied sciences. It's accessible and beneficial and provable.

Of course, I also had four years of undergrad and four years of gainful employment to consolidate my knowledge of basic science. I can't expect theology or even this weird intersection of theology and science to have the same kind of comfortable relatability in just a month and a half. It'll take two months, minimum. Three, if we want to be safe about it.¹

And that's okay. Because I didn't come to another country to bask myself in the familiar, either.

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1 We all know I'm joking, right? This is a joke. It's funny because it's such a vast underestimation of the time it takes to gain proficiency in any endeavor. Oh boy, do I like explaining jokes due to a lack of vocal context. But also, my favorite joke is one that's explained, so what do I know? 

 ^↩

The Limits

First, I need you all to watch the new Jessica Jones trailer. I'll be here when you get done, don't worry.

(... I realize in retrospect that a sizable chunk of my readership are people over the age of forty who have little interest in Netflix adaptation of Marvel comic books, nor do they view comic books as a particularly mature medium, and while I could argue that point into the ground, I don't think it'd be a beneficial use of my time. All of that to say, you don't really have to watch that trailer if you don't want because it's not, like, spiritually important or anything at this point. It's just flipping awesome to me.)

Now, on to the actual post!

The theories that work best are the ones that hold when you push them to positive and negative infinity. I learned that in my first physics-major level class, in Mechanics. You push the theory to the boundaries and if it doesn't hold up, you need a better theory. Newtonian physics can't explain Mercury's orbit because it's outside the limits of the theory. You need Relativity. It's a useful test. It helps you point out your weaknesses in what you think is true.

What I'm saying is that if you're proposing to feed me truth, that truth has to work at the limits.

I ran into this problem on Sunday morning. The pastor had been preaching about humans being made in the image of God and we were talking after the service (four women, I might add, having an intellectual discussion about what the definition of Imago Dei really is) and discussion whether we liked the pastor's examples of what defines humans as being distinctly human, set apart from the rest of creation. I pushed an idea further than I should, saying that the idea of a chimp developing speech isn't too far-fetched and my friend pushed back, saying that I was taking a hypothetical too far. And that's when I came back with what is my perpetual trump card in an argument like this. "A theory has to work at the limits. That's how you know you have a strong theory."

And then we talked ourselves down and chatted about lunch and apologized for seeming combative or argumentative and moved on with our days. The thought that stuck with me, by the way, from the sermon, was how the pastor talked about humanity as a glorious ruin, a CS Lewis quote that I can't find, and as a masterpiece that could be restored. The idea that's still percolating in my head is how I could be restored.

That's the difference here, I think. The line between what it means to be made in the image of God or the discussions of how the universe came to be or whether there's a purpose to all of it, those are intellectual discussions, in some way. They're things that we can debate and contend and ponder and built academic arguments around. But when someone asks me if science and religion have to be enemies, I'm going to tell them no. Because at the heart of it, this is not what matters to you and me. You and me, we were always going to pick and choose anyway, to find profundity where we like, where we felt like it was, in the words we scribble in journals, in the things we get tattooed on our arms, the phrases we repeat in our hearts.

I'm not going to get "Test the limits of the hypothesis" inked onto my skin.

"Glorious ruin," on the other hand...

There's a beating heart that neither science and religion can get at, I think. There's an unconquerable life that refuses to be informed by the best of ideas. It knows how it feels, it knows what tugs at it, and institutions, no matter how well-intended or how well-informed, don't tug like that. I don't know how to formalize that. I don't know how to put that into theoretical terms and honestly, I kinda don't want to. I don't want to put this little flame of hope and beauty into any kind of box. I want to leave it as a light, floating out into the sky and the hills, wherever it wants to be.

But I also believe there's value in thinking about our place on earth, in the universe, our responsibilities. I think there's many a way to inform our view of the world, some more helpful than others.

I want to find the helpful ways.

I want to help us soar.

The Line

Editor's note: I wrote this on maybe Tuesday? and I cannot be bothered today do any actual editing or to see if my point or metaphor was valid or if I indeed have a point or use a metaphor. So if it's brilliant, that's awesome and I'm going to give my past self a high-five but if it's a waste of internet space, that's what personal blogs are for, my friends.

So, say I want to have kids. Say that this is a choice I've thought through deeply. What did that thought process look like?

-I probably evaluated my reproductive health, to make sure that I could produce a healthy baby without risk to myself or the baby.
-I probably looked at my financial situation to make sure I could support a baby.
-I thought about myself and whether I'm really ready to be in charge of another life, if I can really make that time commitment, if I'm strong enough to go through pregnancy, childbirth, the first few months of sleeplessness, and then the years after. I probably thought about whether this commitment was something I was mentally prepared for.
-I thought about that baby's life, where the baby would go to preschool or school or who would be an influence over the years, what I would do when the baby started to be a child that started to be a teenager that started to be an adult human, how I would guide that life and what help I'd need in guiding that life.
-At the end of all of that thinking, I probably ran one more check against my biases. Is this just the hormones talking? How does my place as a woman in society influence how I feel? Would this baby be something that I'm doing just for myself or is there something deeper, some unspoken but present biological need to pass on my genes? Is the choice to have a baby helpful, sacred? Is this something that I need to be doing? Is it something I'm doing for the right reasons?

Now, having a kid is one of the most important decisions that someone will decide. I would posit that it's a decision that can be made outside of a relationship, but that's neither here nor there. There are a good plenty of logical steps to go through. And, after that, there's a good deal of deep emotion to wade through.

When we take the time to consider our lives, our purpose in the universe, I think we do it in the same way. We think about all the logical considerations and then we sit down and think about how we feel and where that feeling comes from. Do we believe in a higher purpose? Do we just have an instinct in our gut? Do we think that both of those things are infallible?

That interplay between logic and emotion is something I'm interested in. I think we're primed to follow our gut when logic or reason or science tells us otherwise, especially when we're deeply invested in an idea. Even if getting pregnant or having a baby is something that's especially difficult for me because my ovaries are lazy, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't try to have a kid of my own because I feel deeply and within my heart that I would be a fantastic mother. And I may move to other ways of being a maternal figure when my body fails me, but that's only because I've decided that I want to be a mother. I want to help the world in that way. And that decision will be slightly irrational on my part. Nothing about rational, logical science can explain to me why I want to have kids.

I think that may lead to a fundamental difficulty here. There's a line between being in love and being reasonable. And I think when we can resolve the line between love and reason we will have gotten somewhere.

Nothing Short of Thankful

It's the little things in life I like to be thankful for, mostly because being thankful for the big things opens up a whole world of guilt and questioning of grace and a perpetual crisis of faith triggered by the undeserved and under-utilized goodness inherent in my life. A smile or a Facebook message when I was feeling low? Acceptable blessings. A solid home life and a position in a society bent in my favor providing for my every whim? An unfathomable blessing that brings up troubling questions.

So today, I'm thankful for my french press. Cheaper than a coffee maker, unobtrusive, and makes me feel extraordinarily European when I'm getting my caffeine fix for the hour. 

I'm thankful for my fairy lights, making my room feel magical and whimsical and homey.

I'm thankful for chili and cornbread and friends and wine and a surprisingly efficient public transportation system.

I'm thankful for my boots, bought after a marathon brunch in New York City, broken in while climbing Scottish hills, and now as comfortable on my feet as flip-flops at the end of the summer.

I'm thankful for Night Vale, for its weird and wonderful stories, for its comforting voice and its challenging subtexts. 

I'm beyond thankful for my ukulele and for singing. I think music is actually one of those huge boons from a benevolent deity, an undeserved gift that gives me hope that maybe the world is actually good, after all. 

I'm thankful for sunny skies, farmer's markets, and friends to enjoy them with.

I'm thankful for overcast skies and orange tree leaves and the quietness of fall. 

I'm thankful for books. And albums. And DVDs. And rings. And mead.

I'm thankful for happiness, for an uncomplicated, unencumbered, expectation-less simple contentment, humming to myself while the world whirrs around me. 

I'm thankful for today. And tomorrow, when it comes. 

Music Videos

I wrote maybe three posts for today, but I didn't really love any of them, so we're just going to do a FunDay Monday post. Here are a bunch of music videos that I think are fabulous:

1. Stupid by Brendan Maclean

I first heard this song and this artist on Welcome to Night Vale, which you should totally check out if you haven't yet, available wherever fine podcasts are hidden. This video is basically a fantastic dance party to the catchiest of songs but it's a dance party with a story, dammit. 

2. Some Nights by Fun.

You know this song from the radio when it was overplayed a couple of summers ago. The video, though, is fantastic and not the story you'd think would go along with this song. This is also the first music video that I'd watched since I was into N*Sync, so it's oddly retroactively formative for me.

3. I Wanna Get Better by Bleachers

Rhetta and many people you love are in this video. I also appreciate how the song is nested in the video's story on this one. 

4a. Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise by The Avett Brothers 

Mesmerizing video for one of my favorite songs.

4b. Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise- Live by The Avett Brothers

Scott Avett's smile at 3:20 is life-giving. 

5. Creep by Radiohead, cover by Post-modern Jukebox

If you haven't listened to the joy and wonder that are Scott Bradlee's covers, listen to this one because it'll make you feel things, and then move on to Stacy's Mom, Bad Romance, and I Want it That Way, and then give him all your money because they're all fantastic. 

Look at the Stars

Let’s keep it colloquial this week. When we’re talking about Science and Religion, what are we talking about, exactly? 

Most of us when asked about science and religion would jump to the controversies created whenever scientific discovery or technology pushes into parts of human experience that religion had previously held ultimate authority over, things like the big bang, evolution or when human life begins. Those are important parts of the discussion, flashpoint topics that make us realize the depth of our beliefs, but I’d rather not use those topics as my entry point for Science and Religion¹. It’s not an empowering place to start from- you’re in a position of listening to existing arguments and picking a side instead of making discoveries for yourself. 

So let’s reframe the discussion. When you look at the night sky, how do you feel? 

The Sunflower Galaxy. Image credit to Bill Synder.

1. You look up and see stars, planets, galaxies, meteors and satellites and stand in awe of what we know. That red dot there, we know that there’s water flowing across its surface. That red dot over there, we know its size, distance, and lifespan. We can study the ground on another planet and measure the ages of the stars and galaxies. There is a whole universe of worlds to discover and systems to study, full of unanswered questions and brilliant possibilities, and we, as tiny insignificant mammals on one middle-sized rock near one middle-sized star, have the ability to understand it. 
2. You look up and see a creation, singing the glory of the One who made it, in awe of the Being who set the stars and the planets in the sky, ordering their courses, leaving them as one last bastion of untouchable beauty in a broken and hurting world. The universe is huge and filled with wonders and we are so small and insignificant in comparison and yet we are loved. The same God who made the galaxies and the nebulas is the one who came to save us from ourselves because He loves us. The night sky is a humbling miracle. 
3. You look up and see the constellations, the patterns of stars with hundreds of stories to tell. You feel connected to people from thousands of years ago who looked up at these same stars and saw heroes and monsters and people and beasts? There’s the Big Dipper, or the Plow, or the Drinking Gourd, but it’s the same seven stars pointing to the north of our sky. And Orion, a hunter or a shepherd or a giant or a drum, but with those three stars anyone can pick out of any northern hemisphere winter or southern hemisphere summer sky around the world. No matter our differences, we’re joined together with everyone around the world, all living and dying under this same sky.
4. You stay inside because you can’t see any stars from where you are anyway, content with the world as seen on the TV or phone or computer screens. Because if you wanted a pretty picture of space, you could just google it without the discomfort of outside. 

What did you pick? None of those choices, right? Nothing fit exactly. Maybe you’ve felt each one of those over course of your life. Maybe you’d like to combine one or two or all of the choices or maybe your choice depends on your mood or the day you’ve had. Maybe one of them hints at a universal truth, or maybe none of them do. But the beauty of human existence in the twenty-first century is that we have this choice. We have options for what we want to believe. We get to set the definitions. 

That, to me, is what Science and Religion is about. It’s about how we choose to view our experience of existence, where we go to find answers about the deep questions of who we are, where we came from, what we should do with our lives. Religion in power used to have the main say on those kinds of questions, but science has opened up the universe and made it knowable, bringing in a whole host of new questions with that opening. The controversies are the growing pains of maturing human thought.

Practically, of course, none of that matters. You can live your life trying to be nice to other people, at least when it’s convenient, and you’ll probably get by just fine. You can find happiness without pondering the existence or lack thereof of God. Probably, actually, you’d find much more immediate happiness by avoiding that question altogether. There is such a wealth of experience found in interactions with other humans, enough to make a full life of it, that we don’t need to look for any other “deeper” meaning. 

But if the night sky or the mountains or the ocean or the laugh of a baby or the impending death of the Sun has ever made you pause and think about the wonder of it all, stick around. We’ve got some fascinating places to go.

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1 Starting at, say, evolution leaves me with the feeling that I should be talking in a hushed voice because mommy and daddy just had a fight and I don’t want to upset either of them again, like religion is your mother who’s so kind but who is also convinced she knows best and your dad is science who can do so many awesome things but can also be kinda a dick sometimes.^↩

An Away-Day Meditation

On Saturday morning, I woke up to my alarm, hit snooze until I absolutely had to be up, and rushed out the door without my coffee. This is normal. This is something I do when I'm home.

I got on a charter bus with other people from my school and from my program and was ferried along the highway for maybe an hour or so, past fields and hills and livestock. I've stopped counting the number of hours I've spent on tour buses in my life and I don't even want to try to estimate the number of miles I've travelled in a vehicle. Even the twisting and turning roads getting into town felt normal. It felt like home.

We got out of the bus in Comrie, a little town on the edge of the Highlands, and were ushered into a church. Within minutes, I knew where the bathrooms, kitchen, and office were. Despite the hot tea and "biscuits" being served, I'm no stranger to a church. I must have visited at least a hundred on various and sundry trips. This was normal. This felt like home.

We played that get-to-know-you signature bingo. You know, the one where you have a grid with one description per square, like "born outside the US" or "has two dogs", and you have to fill in a name for each square and the first one to get all the names wins? Other than the fact that the descriptions were things like, "born outside the UK" and "has read more than 10 pages of the Quran", this was something I've done many a time. The way the ambient noise in the room increases and one intensely competitive pack forms while everyone else casually searches for someone who plays an instrument is something I've come to anticipate from games like this. It's normal. It feels like home.

There are these rivers that meet in town, two or three, I don't remember, and I don't know their names. But one of them flows right past the back of the church, all white caps and bubbles as it goes over the rocks and around bends, and there's a bench under some trees where you could sit and watch if you'd like.  And there's a waterfall back up in the woods. We went on a hike as a group and took some pictures.

And the woods, they go on, it feels like forever, green as far as the eye can see, moss covering fallen tree trunks and running up living tree trunks and leaves blocking out the grey of the sky. I guess it's the right amount of green for October- I'm not used to noticing until I'm driving up into the mountains. And after some serious climbing, we came up on this view.

And I know, I know that the hills are different, that these are someone else's rocks jutting up from someone else's section of our planet and I know that this grass and these trees and everything around me is different, subtly suited to the climate here as opposed to there and I know they see the stars in different places and I know that no one sounds like me, but when I see these hills and when I see these fields and when I see these trees, it feels... normal. It feels like home. And that bittersweet longing that tugs at your insides when you've found the place that you'd want to rest in until your days are done, I feel that most when I'm out there near the mountains, with peaks and valleys laid out before me, just barely covered in blankets of trees and brush, where the air bites just a bit and the wind catches you in the back like an old friend. It's crushing, having that knowledge of where your soul wants to be and having to leave at the end of the day anyway.

Then again, that leaving, that feels normal too. That also feels like home.

The Tumblr Conundrum

I’ve decided that I’m going to stop pretending that I’m not an adult. Adults are, by the safest definition possible, people who are responsible for themselves and if nothing else, I am that. Oh, and I pay for my own Netflix. So yeah. Adult.  

Somewhere in my past, 18-year-old me is raising her hand so she can ask when we stopped being an adult because she’s convinced that she is one, poor dear. She’ll take ten seconds to evaluate my life and say that yes, empirically, I’ve been an adult this whole time. I’ve been basically financially independent since starting college, I’ve paid for my own heath insurance since I was 19, I’ve done my own taxes for years, I’ve taken care of all of my basic needs on my own, and I had a job, almost a career, for four years straight, that I left of my own accord to pursue an academic field I'm interested in. Plus, dude*, you’re 27. There’s absolutely no way that anyone over the age of 25 can consider themselves as anything other than an adult. Just not possible. 

Then again, I have Batman sheets, a stuffed Sadness from Inside Out and a tumblr, so really, whether I truly qualify as an adult or not is anyone’s guess.

The thing is, I don’t feel immature or irresponsible or childish or incapable. I could have bought taupe sheets and deleted my tumblr and that wouldn’t change the underlying fact that I don’t feel like I’ve grown up any in terms of responsibility since I started college. I had the future-focus and life-planning skills down early on in life and I’ve always had a good head on my shoulders about most things. I like to see myself as an old soul that took a couple of years off to take in the things about life that I missed enjoying when I was busy being serious. I sing and laugh a lot more now than I did in high school. I think the diversion from adulthood was worth it, if it means I get to keep that.

So now, I guess, it’s time for the pendulum to swing back. It’s high time I started taking myself seriously again and regained some focus. To that end, I’ll start being more thoughtful before I speak and more intentional when I write. I think I’ll take Fridays as a chance to start writing a little more concretely about science and religion as a way of solidifying all the new knowledge that I have, with an eye to moving the best of that over to a more professional blog in the future. And though there’s a tired little part of my soul that’s sighing in disgust right now because she doesn’t care to be doing work of any kind, I think we’ve got to listen to the voice of reason here. 

Just maybe not all the time. 

Sadness Selfie! Because everything is improved with Sadness. 

*I don’t think I would have said dude when I was 18. Too busy trying to be pretentious. But I’m going to project some of my current moxie backwards anyway. History is written by the victors. 

But What Do I Know, Anyway

I was walking up from the library stacks the other day and I realized that at some point, we stopped talking about facts. Somewhere, we stopped talking about things that we know because to say that you know something is difficult. To be certain of anything is almost a joke. At this stage, all the ideas we’re talking about are just that- ideas. Some ideas are more supported than others, some ideas logically lead to others, some ideas are more entrenched than others, but none of them make it into the realm of complete and total confident knowledge. 

So that’s great. 

I mean, everything from here on out is going to be reading about someone’s idea and thinking about someone’s idea and critiquing someone’s idea and coming up with an idea to compliment or contradict or build on someone’s idea. And that’s how things are done, which is the striking bit to me. 

I didn’t ever realize how much I liked experimental science until this moment. It’s not just talking around the issue. You see something interesting, you try to explain it, you do experiments, you get results, and in all of the basic experiments, you learn something. Something is explained. Something can be predicted. Something can be known as true or untrue. 

But then I remember how much we lie to children. We say there are five senses to make the idea of senses easier to grasp, when you really have twenty of them at least. We say there are nine eight planets because explaining the nuances of classification of really big rocks or balls of gases and liquids in space isn’t easy and we’re constantly having to re-evaluate it. There are, what, seven continents, but only because Europe wants to feel special. Most of the things I think I know are actually asterisks all the way down.

 And all of that is just about observable things, things we can see and conceptualize. It doesn’t even touch on the things we feel or believe without physical proof. And maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe those two things should stay separate. No one wants science to tell them what to believe, especially when the science we learned in school was a lie an incomplete picture of what could be conceived of to be true. And no one wants any specific religion directing science, especially since we can all get through our daily lives without needing to appeal to science or religion.

We were walking out of the building after class on Tuesday and talking about some of the ideas that popped up during the discussion, like whether which interpretation of quantum mechanics you choose to adhere to has to change what you believe, theologically. The idea that had come up in class was that you can go about your life either way. Quantum indeterminacy doesn’t have to change anything for you, really. Who thinks about that kind of stuff, anyway? 

And as we talked, we came around to something that I fundamentally believe to be true. I believe that someone needs to be thinking about this. About all of this. Quantum mechanics helps to explain the smallest things in our world, it has direct influences on the technology that we use, and just because I can’t be bothered to be in a lab doesn’t mean someone else shouldn’t be. And the same thing goes for religion. We have these complex belief systems that have sustained people for centuries, millennia even. Shouldn’t someone be thinking about that, asking questions about what we believe and what that means, especially in an age where science has so fundamentally altered how we see the world and think about reality? 

So that’s a motivating factor, if you like. 

I’ve got this impregnable heart and soul but it exists in this world of discovery, and exploration, and interaction with others and that world is unspeakably complex. You can go about your day loving the people you’re going to love, eating the food you’re going to eat, doing the things you’re going to do inside the closed system of our planet and the social structures we’ve built upon it and you never have to ask why or how. But I think somebody has to. I think those are important questions. 

Questions that might not have answers, but important questions nonetheless. 

Just Your Typical Wednesday

Let’s try some reverse solipsism here. You ever feel like everyone else is more complex than you, like they’re in on some secret, some way of looking at the world that you don’t have access to yet? Like you’re the one in the process of growing and everyone else is already there? Okay, so not technically reverse solipsism, but I can’t pretend that everyone else is real and I’m not. I’m here. Like, I’m right here.

Oh no. 

What if I’m not? How would I know? What am I, even? What does it mean to be me?

Okay, not helpful. Let’s proceed forward under the assumption that I’m real and that I’m here and so are the rest of you, because that’s much more useful. Great. Phew. I feel better already. 

It’s just- and I know this is just a pile of insecurities on my part, but- I feel like I had myself figured out, you know? I felt like I knew my place and my abilities and my strengths and my weaknesses, but it’s like moving to a new city flipped all that around. It’s not particularly helpful that I’m starting a completely new endeavor that requires me to, at least for right now, spend a lot of time laying the mental groundwork for a lot of future study. It’s like somebody tossed me a pile of tangled yarn, told me that I’ll need to make a sweater out of it soon, and said, “Oh, by the way, some of those are sharp,” on the way out the door. Like, what? Why? How? What purpose could any of this be for? Why would anyone sign up for this? 

And that’s an answer for Friday and I promise, I have it together and I’m fine and I’m excited about everything and I’m making friends. No one panic. I went out to the pub with my flatmates for my birthday and I’ve made friends with a girl my program who brought me cake, which was just the best, and I’m getting along just fine. It’s only that I miss the comfort of being good at my job. I miss the ability to get pizza and beer and watch half of a season of a show in one sitting with friends. I miss my friends. I miss the results of all the work I already did finding my place in the world. I forgot how much work I put in to get to that place. 

But hey, you know, everyone’s awkward when you first meet them and everyone says dumb things and makes weird first impressions and all of that. And I’m getting better at coming to the metaphorical table and meeting people and hanging out and stuff. I made new facebook friends. It’s just a slow process for me, you know? I don’t like opening up. I hate silences, so I spew like ten thousand words a minute and at least six thousand of those fall flat and I’m internally dying, but like, none of that is me. At least, it’s not the me that I know. But we’ll figure it out. Life will move past all this eventually. 

Just a blanket apology to everyone waiting on the growth spurt. I’m working on it, I promise. It’s all just a process. And anytime anyone else wants to chat about how they’re still figuring it all out as well, I’m a hundred percent here for you. It’d be a nice confirmation of my existence.

It's My Birthday!

October 5th, 2014:

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And thus began a pretty solid year, if I say so myself. Applying for grad school, getting into grad school, going on adventures up and down and across the country, moving to a new country, living in said new country where there are castles and actual golden-looking coins used for money... it's been good. And other stuff too, but, you know, good.

I'm celebrating this year by spending some quality time with the library, of course, but there's also a pub and a group of friends calling my name post-study, so don't lose hope for me yet! Here's to another fabulous twenty-something year!

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