We make our own sky.

All photos courtesy skabat169. Check out his photostream!

Ben was talking about the sky, so I thought I would talk about a sunrise I saw this week. But first, some cultural context.

When I was in high school I attended a camp called Night Camp for one week every summer. The premise of Night Camp is simple: you stay up all night and sleep during the day while camping out in the woods. The consequences of that premise are many and profound, but those are for another post. Suffice it to say that Night Camp was the defining experience of my high school years, and I worked at Camp Innabah where the camp is held for three of my college summers and volunteered there again last year. This week however I merely went to visit, on bonfire night.

It's not just bonfire night. This night also involved looking at Saturn through a telescope and 2 a.m. Ultimate Frisbee with glow necklaces. But after all that and a Bible study, we had a bonfire.

Ultimate

By now it was after 4 a.m. and getting on toward sunrise. I had already succumbed to a nap on a picnic table bench (I worked a full day; what do you want from me?) and I saw the first lightening of the horizon, though others denied it. We began with a prelude of bamboo, large masses of tender green-leaved shoots dropped unceremoniously on the fire ring and ceremoniously ringing out with pops resembling fireworks and high flames that threatened the tree branches fifteen feet above. Then a pallet was dropped on, not quite so spectacular but with more staying power.

bamboo

Then, worship. A few Bible verses, a few songs, and a few words generally constitute worship at Night Camp, but the glow of the burning pallet mandated more mirth. We sang what was planned, then we sang what could be called the classics of the camp canon. Another pallet on the fire. Now singing and dancing, now the Funky Chicken, now dosey does for the refrain of "Lord of the Dance," now swaying shoulder-to-shoulder for "Pass It On."

Then the picnic table, the old and wobbly picnic table donated by Steve's church for just this purpose. On top of the fire and burning with surprising speed,  the first little licks of flame in a circle near the center, then the entire length of the boards leaping into the chorus. But we were not singing now; this must be watched.

picnic table graciously donated by Epworth UMC, Cockeysville, MD

Overhead there was no longer any denying that the night was ending, and it is to this moment that Ben's reflection returned me. The waning crescent hung 75 degrees in the sky against a color somewhere on this guy's face:

photo credit: Kevin Bolton

David claimed to awaken the dawn with the harp and the lyre; surely we had kindled the horizon with our fire and roused the sun with our voices. It was not only our moods that were lightened by the blaze, our inhibitions that gave up the ghost; the whole theater around us was literally shifted along the visible spectrum.

This difference in perception was not just a sentimental imposition of the imagination. The colors really did look different to our eyes. When the time came to extinguish the fire (there was still a boat picnic and a polar bear swim to be had, after all) and the buckets of water became sizzling clouds and the orb we had created yielded to another which had not yet shown its face, the spell broke. The sky no longer looked mysteriously indigo, but kinda paleish. With the adjustment of our eyes illumination did not seem to emanate from within our circle, but was shed equally from all directions. Though no one else was around, I suddenly felt observed.

Later on my stepbrother jokingly harassed my mother for allowing me to go to such a place as a kid, insinuating pagan dances around the fire. I don't think he knew how close his description was to reality. There was no influence of substance stronger than s'more, no shameful act committed by firelight, no rash oath sworn, and no stupid tempting of the flame. The God who was blessed and who blessed it was none but the Lord of heaven and earth.

But that was revelry.

April Fool

Hop on your bike. Head east on Springfield Ave from 52nd street. Pick up speed as you approach the bottom of the hill. Keep your momentum going uphill.

Now, close your eyes. Inhale. Smell spring pass in the breeze, aromas shifting as you pass each tree.

I hope you don't have bad balance or allergies.

Resonance

Do re mi fa so...

Looking out the window this morning I see that the earth is beginning to resonate.

Let us not be unscientific in our language here. Strictly speaking, resonance occurs when you touch something in just the way it is meant to be touched and it breaks into song.

It has been six months since the sunlight took on the peculiarly golden slant it acquires every September. I know that the earth is only now emerging from the slumber to which that light alluded.

Yet resonance is no gentle phenomenon,* and March is no gentle month. I remember the teaching from kindergarten: even if March comes in like a lamb, you can bet it will go out like a lion.

Therein lies, I wonder, a principle of nature. New life arrives amid violence. April could not be born from February without a tumultuous March, just as babies cannot be born from their mother without labor pains. Positive feedback mechanisms, resonance, are required in order to overthrow the status quo.

Indeed, Paul the Apostle tells us in the passage called the high peak of Scripture that

"the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now", "in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." (Romans 8: 22, 20b-21)

Even the freedom of glory which is the final restoration of humanity and of the world will require a tumultuous transition.

I further wonder: what sort of resonance does the human heart display?

* Just ask the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

Science on Spokes

Zadrejko stands tall.

Jon majored in biology. I majored in physics. We both went for a bike ride.

At the start we spontaneously took a few revolutions around a cul-de-sac. I remarked what an interesting frame of reference that had been - he stationary in front of me and the rest of the world spinning.

We stopped at an old one-room schoolhouse. He noticed a spider on the handle of an old pump, and we talked about how underrated spiders are.

On the way back a flock of geese suddenly passed overhead. Jon was surprised at how low they flew, and how large the flock was.

Soon after, I waxed poetic about the mystery of riding bikes with friends. Again, the frame of reference struck me. Riders are all moving, often at a pretty good clip, yet in each other's eyes they remain still. This exclusively shared frame of reference is a great source of bonding.

It was fun to see our disciplines come out in our observations.

Why I am Not an Evolutionist #1

Or, "Charles Darwin Lied."* Part one of an at-least-three-part series.

Calvin has a hairier face than most.

First, a disclaimer: while I have a modest background in science, that science is not biology, and I am by no means an expert in these matters.

(1) There are a whole host of aspects to life that, while wonderfully aesthetic, imply no obvious reproductive advantage. One can still attempt to explain them through the framework of natural selection and random mutation, and indeed many do attempt so, but these attempts often strike me as strained, and are circular themselves inasmuch they seek to offer evidence for evolution.

A few examples:

• Forgive me for allowing most of the details to escape me, but I remember reading several years ago about a prize awarded to a man for thinking of an explanation for why people aren't nearly as hairy as other apes.
  
  His prize-worthy idea? Perhaps mothers preferred babies who were less hairy and were thus more likely to care for them.
  
  That's it.
  
  My problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify any trait unique to humans. Who knows what would be possible if our great-grandmothers had different tastes! Perhaps we would all be able to sing "Do your ears hang low?" with much more gusto. Perhaps Chewbacca would exist in reality and not in myth.


• The peacock's tail is a prime example of what is called "sexual selection:" the trait makes the peacock no more fit physically, indeed less so, but nevertheless makes him more fit in the evolutionary sense because peahens are impressed by peacocks with more impressive tails. The tails are said to signal fitness, perhaps because the man is able to survive despite the handicap.
  
  The logic strikes me as just a bit twisted. He proves he has good genes by surviving despite having bad genes (which give him a functionally useless display of feathers).
  
  (And why should peahens prefer mates with more impressive tails to begin with? Would this trait itself not have to evolve?)
  
  Another challenge is presented by the knowledge that it seems peahen mate selection is rather independent of peacock tail impressiveness. For the evolutionary argument to hold up in light of this knowledge, peahen preference toward impressive tails must have evolved some time ago, then evolved away again after the men had gone through all the effort of evolving their tails. Women are so hard to please.
  
  Consider, for a moment, an alternative explanation: Peacock tails are beautiful, and this fact has something to do with their origin.**
  
  
• As a final example, consider breasts in women, a topic upon which my male readers should have no trouble focusing. Believe it or not, their presence presents a significant challenge to evolutionary theorists.
  
  The story is similar to the puzzle of why we aren't so hairy. Put simply, most female mammals develop breasts only after giving birth, and their breasts remain only while nursing. Only in human women do they develop first and for always at adolescence, then further around the time of birth. Breasts in other mammals are decidedly unattractive to males, since they signal that the female is not in much of a state to bear young.
  
  Why should this be so? There are evolutionary ideas. Perhaps breasts evolved so that babies would have an easier time nursing. I think it was Stephen Jay Gould who posited that they developed so men would have an easier time getting used to mating face-to-face (which raises the question of why people evolved the propensity to mate face-to-face). Evidently, our great-grandfathers much preferred their wives' posteriors to their faces. Men are so insensitive.
  
  But these ideas are just speculation. In short, there is no good reason why this trait ought to evolve, from a Darwinian perspective. One can posit, "There must have been a good reason, because this trait clearly evolved!" But that is circular reasoning and placing faith in Nothing.
  
  And so I say, only one third in jest, is it not evident that breasts are a great gift from God to men, women, and babies alike?
  

  "I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment..." (Ezekiel 16:7a).

In short, the world is full of incredible beauty, and this beauty is very difficult to explain with a framework that only rewards survival, like a society of Van Goghs which cares nothing for its artists.

Rather, it is evident to me that many things are beautiful because they were made with beauty in mind.**

*Not especially true, as there is a world of difference between lying and simply being mistaken. But it goes well with another recent post of mine.

**This, of course, requires that beauty exists in an intrinsic, objective sense.***

***This, of course, requires that there exist someone with the authority to set such a standard. You can see where I'm going...

True Education

Lasagna facilitates true education.**

The high school physics textbook from which I will be teaching next year begins with a philosophical treatise on the nature of science and its relation to religion, the arts, and technology.

Were I teaching a worldview class, this chapter would provide me with weeks of material. A pure physics course could probably skip the chapter without missing a beat. Fortunately, the philosophy of my school allows the former to supplement the latter.

Among many thought-provoking quotes, I find:

A truly educated person is knowledgeable in both the arts and the sciences.

I believe this summarizes the philosophy behind liberal arts education. Penn's College of Arts and Sciences, the school from which I have my degree, still practices this idea in theory: In addition to 18.5 courses in my major (physics), I had to take courses from seven varied sectors, in addition to language, writing, and quantitative data analysis requirements. In this way, no student gets out of the College without being exposed to the full spectrum of arts and sciences.

In theory.

It doesn't surprise me that the above quote would come from a physicist. Most physicists I've encountered are also students of the liberal arts. Many consider themselves philosophers, or so their actions indicate (like the writing of this chapter), and many have deep love for literature. Indeed, I feel I could have almost as easily majored in English or history as physics or biology, and I treasured the excursions into these other subjects which my requirements permitted me.

However, I can't help but feel that the reverse is considerably less true for most students of the liberal arts. While most of my colleagues in physics enjoy studies in music or philosophy or religious studies, friends majoring in liberal arts disciplines are likely to take the easiest and fewest courses in science and math possible.

Geology is a favorite because it fulfills two requirements simultaneously. So instead of plumbing the wonders of creation with the time permitted them, students suffer through a semester of rocks and plate tectonics (interesting, to be sure, but hardly at the top of the list) and learn very little.

I think this highlights a real failure. A popular excuse is that these students simply can't handle real science courses, but I'm skeptical. Students at Penn have demonstrated considerable aptitude in math and science before being admitted.

Instead, I think there is very little popular appreciation for the sciences. And it is quite possible that introductory courses for non-majors go about things the wrong way.

Perhaps physics courses for non-majors should include conceptual overviews of the great staggering truths of physics: To describe light as either a particle or a wave, or even as both, is inadequate. Time moves slower when you move faster. It is literally impossible to know exactly where something is at a specific time.

I could go on. Having an inkling of these ideas changes fundamentally one's conception of reality, something which undoubtedly deserves expression in the arts. Intro courses should make them clear.

However, I think the core problem is that our culture somehow devalues science. Science is for geeks and mad professors, but only technology has relevance for the general public. It doesn't have nearly as much to teach about the human condition than literature or history. Or so the assumptions go.

Bunk, I say. As a science teacher, I hope to instill otherwise.

As for you who haven't filled your science requirements, do yourselves a favor. Don't take the boring way out.

*My old housemate Carlos is a notable exception. An English major, Carlos wishes he had done physics. Now there's a man with his head on straight.
**Gosh, by year's end two of these people will be married, and the other two likely aren't very far behind. Growing up is weird...

Budding Hope

Spring is great.

They're doing it again.

There's a way the light hits the trees in April that you don't see the rest of the year. I can't describe it except to say that the trees seem to resonate. Newly budded leaves rejoice in their first sunlight.

The beginning of spring smacks you in the face if you're trying to be miserable. You realize you're a fool. The entire natural world is singing with delight at new life, and there you are, pretending like life isn't good.

I love whizzing through the streets on my bicycle and catching whiffs of flowers.

And if life isn't good, and you're not pretending? Then spring brings something even more beautiful:

"Come, you hopeless! Find hope, for just as this creation was barren and now bursts forth, so too can your life. Come, see the nature of my abundance!"

The dead's alive and the lost is found - glory, hallelujah!

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23

If you're a Christian, then I hope you identify with my last post and that God smiled on you this Easter as well.

If you're not, the post probably sounded like foolishness, inasmuch as it claims to be evidence of an abundant life given by Jesus. You might say that Jesus's signature is not readily visible on the works, and one need not be a Christian to enjoy such simple blessings, so why attribute them to him?

I would say that you're right, but you're mistaken. My Easter Sunday didn't come with a greeting written in the sky or an angelic pancake, but I still saw the divine in what I received.

For his own reasons, our God is a God who hides himself so that he may be sought out by his creatures. And he is also a God who bestows his blessings on all of his children, whether they honor his Son or not.

It is for this reason that, as the seraphim cry out in Isaiah 6:3, the whole earth is full of his glory. We all experience sunrises and smiling babies and friendships as I did today because God loves us all and shows himself through his good gifts.

Such a thing as good could not exist without such a person as God to set the standard. So the enjoyment of any good thing is screaming proof of his existence and his nature. Any response but humble gratitude is off the mark.

But what of that great counterargument, suffering? If all good things come from God, then what of the bad? Is God not then spiteful as often as he is benevolent, and as worthy of curses as of praise?

Indeed, in church today we heard of orphans in Liberia and a missionary's house burning down and the poverty of Malawi, and also death. It is a worthy question to ask how anyone can believe in God in the face of pain and death.

The answer is that the sufferings that touch all and fill the lives of so many testify all the more of God and his goodness. These things entered the world through humanity's choice to reject a world without them.

Adam and Eve were given two trees - one which gave eternal life, and one of which they were promised brought death. They chose the death tree. So do we. We all know what is right but so often choose to do what is wrong.

And the ultimate evil, death, doesn't come from God's design; from the beginning it was not so. Death springs from transgression in the same way that sunflowers spring from sunflower seeds.

Jesus is not made an irrelevant liar by suffering and death. On the contrary, it is through these things that we see desperately our need for him.

Simply, it is through him that they are not the end of the story. They could have been - God wasn't obligated to do what he did - but the wonderful truth of Easter is that they are not. Jesus's birth brought a new human nature into the world, one that was not doomed to trespass. He experienced suffering like none have and hung on a tree so that, impossibly, God could be found just and we could be found blameless.

And he lived again. Death, the unconquered foe, could not hold one who knew no transgression. Jesus left his tomb, never to be touched again by pain or by death.

The Good News is that, for those willing to admit that they need it, his victory is for the sharing.

It is for this reason that Christians can look at a day when the sky turned black and call it Good Friday. And it is for this reason that Easter brings joy, hope, and love.

Joy, because just as Jesus raised from the grave, so shall we.

Hope, because we find ever greater power over our nature which knows good and does evil, and look forward to a day when that release is final.

Love, because to understand Jesus's work for us is to adore him for accomplishing it and to deeply want to live out his example to all his children.

Happy Easter.

Sunsets, not Sushi

View from a farmer's field along my route.

My mom and I were joking the other day about how I'm deadline motivated. She remarked that it's not just that deadlines motivate me to accomplish things; it's that deadlines are the only things which motivate me.

I couldn't really argue with her.

Over the break I've been riding my bike, to fight atrophy and because it's fun. It may not help that I haven't been rising much before noon, but it always seems to be 4:30 before I realize that I would like to go on a bike ride today and I don't have much time before the sun sets. Deadline motivation at its most pervasive.

The upside of such a temperament is, I realized today, I get to see the sunset every time I ride.

Let me tell you, sunsets are not the kind of thing that gets old. In fact, I've found there's an extra layer of wonder to be had in going out and seeing it every day. To see the sun set is one thing. But to see it go down day after day, blazing glory after blazing glory, over any length of time is quite another.

It's astounding that it's always there. It's been rising and setting every day, reaching incomprehensibly long before I was born, and it will keep rising and setting, Lord tarrying, long after I die. And tomorrow evening, whether I'm looking or not, it will be there.

Yeah, yeah, it's cloudy sometimes. Whatever.

I consider it an immense gift that I live only a short bike ride away from a clear view of the horizon. It is one of the great tragedies of living in the city that the views of the heavens are obscured beyond daily remembrance, one reason I think it would be very hard for me to settle there permanently. Sunset in the city? The best that you can usually do is perceive that it's happening out there, somewhere.

It is the same with God. He has been his glorious self since before the foundation of the world, and he'll keep being his glorious self long after these heavens and this earth have passed away. And he's there every day, free for us to behold, whether we're looking or not. And usually, we retreat into enclaves of our own making, content to allow our own structures and our own lights to block him out of our view, freeing us from the need to acknowledge his majesty.

I could go on, but I think it sufficient to say that

The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.

Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
...
In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun,
Which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
And rejoices like a strong man to run its race.

Its rising is from one end of the heaven,
And its circuit to the other end;
And there is nothing hidden from its heat.
Psalm 19:1-2,4b-6