That’s my birthday. I discovered this (the “Tuesday” part) while talking to a student here at Giant Steps.
Student: Hello.
Ed Furlong: Hi.
Student: When is your birthday?
Ed: April 7th.
Student: (Pauses) What is the year? (sic)
Ed: 1981
Student: (Pauses for no more than 1.5 seconds) You were born on a Tuesday.
Ed: You know, I think you’re right…
Helen (teacher): He’s never wrong.
(This is one of the drafts that remained unpublished, although it was essentially finished)
Today’s second reading.
Lately I’ve been reading the ever-fascinating Simone Weil, from a compilation of her letters and essays called Waiting for God.
I say fascinating, because she was the composite of many paradoxes: She was extraordinarily well-read, but spent much of her life seeking solidarity with the working poor; she possessed spiritual insight to match the mystics, but would not undergo baptism; she found profound - divine - wisdom in the Eucharist, which is seen by many to be foolishness.
Weil says that, fundamentally, all we can do in relation to God is direct our attention. We’re either looking at God, or we’re not, but we can’t make a move in any direction (least of all upward) to run to or flee from God. Thus, most of the spiritual life is about gazing steadily at Him, and waiting.
Eucharist, faith, any notion of God’s presence in my life - the magic of my spiritual adolescence has given way to a vacuum. I don’t know why. I’ve been fighting for it, to keep it, to re-discover it. I’ve read the old books that helped fuel my faith. I’ve undertaken reading Scripture to better understand God’s relationship with me, with His children.
But there’s no alchemy, no miracles of understanding.
When I was in Chicago to help lead a teen retreat, we had an opportunity to offer Eucharistic Adoration. If you’re not familiar with this, or haven’t had the experience, it’s basically this: The Host is exposed in what’s called a “monstrance,” a golden kind of display which stands on the altar, and the position of the Host is at the center of gold simulating the radiating beams of the sun. There’s a ritual for the exposition and a ritual for its conclusion, and in between the faithful have the opportunity to be in the Presence of God. One of the “rules,” in fact, is that the Host can never be unattended while exposed.
In our experience of the Presence of Christ, we explained to the teens, the proper response is adoration.
Fortunate for me that there are still a few touchstones of my faith. I have past experiences with God, times when I would say the Presence of God was undeniable. The condition of my present spiritual vacuum has led to attempts to reason away the experiences, to deny them by way of science or mere pessimism. They have remained in tact - like good magic, there is still something about the experiences, even if they can be understood biochemically, that does not submit to measurement. Truly, the recognition of “mystery” has kept me afloat.
So there, in Chicago, was another touchstone - a ritual almost painfully transparent in its use of sensory stimulation - which crystallized the larger life experience of simply looking at God, and patiently waiting.
Waiting for what, I don’t know. I think trying to know is what got me into this mess.
I picked up a copy of “American Scientist” while at the library today, and sat down for a while to read a number of the articles in the “Evolution” issue.
One of them was the answer to the question, “Why does my voice sound so different when it’s recorded and played back?” Interesting answer, which is somewhat intuitive - Your voice sounds deeper to you because some of the sound waves are transmitted through “the mechanism of your head,” namely your bones. Obviously the vibrations coming off your skull, jawbone are not involved when your voice is played back to you externally, so the deeper pitches are “missing.”
There was also a lot of biographical information on Charles Darwin, much of it new to me: I didn’t realize he narrowly avoided entering the clergy, nor did I realize that he was considered mediocre in school. He reportedly considered his 5 year journey in the HMS Beagle the first true education of his mind.
A related article focused on his theory (and the subsequent scientific support) of Natural Selection. What a fascinating phenomenon!
Of course, you know something, because you learned it in school and it’s just one of those facts that lingers in your mind, undergoing little or no further examination. But to read an article like that, you could almost see the mutations in an organism’s DNA, see the generations pass and the adaptations form, and watch as the “fittest” survived to reproduce.
The issue also bore a good deal of hostility toward “the Creationists,” and I believe they’re right to be opposed but not necessarily to be hostile (because it isn’t constructive).
Why hostile?
I think I can understand the frustration of numberless persons and committees coming together, demanding that an idea be taught as scientific when it is not - simply to call something that which it is not - and that might lead to hostility.
But I kept wondering, as I read. Admittedly, my head started to hurt (from the content as much as the shrinking blood sugar levels), so there may have been material to answer my question. If so, maybe it’ll be easy…
Is it really irreconciliable to believe that evolution and natural selection are biological realities, and simultaneously to believe that there is also a God? I’m not saying we should teach it, I’m just asking the common rationality: Can’t God be behind natural selection? Why should scientists be so ready to see a quality like “beauty” in these processes, while believing they are the smartest beings in the world?