Making Waves

Today I want to go a little off the rails. This is my process. Take an idea way too far, probing the boundaries, then pull back with a better understanding. That's why this post may seem to stray. I want to work this out. Kind of like brainstorming. Throw it out there and see what sticks.

A friend described her belief in the spiritual as energy. Jesus used the word fruit. What if fruit refers to combined energy waves? I saw a short documentary on AM radio once. Back in the early 1900's, several different people were experimenting with transmitting voice over radio waves. The inventor came up with the idea of sending out a continuous wave then imposing changes on it. Instead of carrying voice by wave, the voice was captured in how the received wave differs from the base wave.

Imagine God created the universe and stamped His image, His wave on it. We talk about an artist putting themselves into their work. Imagine that as an energy wave. God then created us in His image and gave us the ability to alter the wave. Or more precisely, we have our own waves and add them to His.

When two waves meet, they merge. If the waves are in synch, the result is a larger, more powerful wave. If the waves are off, then you end up with a different shape. Opposite waves pull each other down. This is the idea of cancelling out a wave.

AM radio imposes a second wave on top of the base. The second wave alters the height of the base wave, making it taller or shorter depending on its own shape. The receiver on the other end filters out the base wave, leaving only the voice wave. God set the base wave and we represent the voice wave.

Then sin entered the picture. We try to become the carrier (base) wave. And I do mean "we" - every single person who ever lived is trying to be that one central wave form. Imagine listening to 100 radio stations all at once. I'm talking about a cacophony billions of times worse.

Fruit refers to the resulting wave form when our waves are merged with the base wave. As we fight against the base, trying to cancel it, the resulting wave is less than ideal. Our fruit is bad.

In the end

Let me take the analogy one step further. Those waves don't disappear. Time itself is merely a part of God's base wave. Our changes linger. That's why in Revelations, God puts a new heaven and a new earth in place. This one has all those bad waves. And the fix is a clean break - aka death.

And that's as far as I've taken this line of thought. I wonder about the mechanics of redemption. We are still ourselves, even though there is this break with the bad waves. Maybe the waves bring a spiritual reality into the physical world. Breaking that connection resets everything. We would connect with this new earth. And because Jesus redeemed our spirit, the waves we impose work with God's base, not against it.

It is truly awesome how intertwined God's creation is. Each new step forward in our understanding opens up vistas of questions we hadn't even considered. Like a never ending tapestry.

Mirror Images

In ant colonies, the queen sends out drones to protect herself. She commands and they all do. Darwin wrote about survival of the fittest after studying wildlife. Wolf packs follow an alpha who fought the last alpha for the position. Left to itself, nature breaks down. The one who does the most damage gets their way.

And everything God does is the opposite. Jesus sacrificed Himself. Instead of taking, He gave. God, our King, provides for us, not the other way around. He protects us. So why would God create a universe that, in its natural state, works the opposite of what He does?

What if He didn't? God created us in His image. He always intended to be in this universe through us. Jesus performed amazing acts changing the world around Him. He told us that those all came from the Father, through Him. Jesus was the example of what we were supposed to be. What if God always meant to interact with this universe through us?

The spiritual then enters and changes our universe through us. We rebelled against God. We put ourselves in His place. Our spirits have changed the universe around us. What I mean, is that these behaviors we see in animals reflect us. They learned from us. It's not a natural state. It's what we made it.

So what if we submitted instead of rebelled? What if we reflected God, and the animals reflect us? A lion would lay down next to a lost lamb and protect it. Snakes would gently lick a baby who stuck its hand into their nest. No fear. Imagine walking up to a T-Rex and petting it like, well, a pet. How different would our world be?

You and I

I've been watching some Youtube videos on narcissism. It's kind of hard. I see some of myself in those descriptions. These particular videos were made by women, so their experience is with narcissistic men. It's my own weakness that lets these things get into my head.

There was one thing that really caught my attention. They mention how narcissists speak in you statements. The counter point is that healthy individuals use I statements. I found this particularly troubling. I have a very hard time speaking in I statements.

Now how many people went back and counted the I's up to this point? Seems to contradict what I'm saying (see, another one!). I can lecture with I. I can't talk about feelings with I. That's always bothered me. Where I work, they teach people how to hold difficult conversations. And this is one piece of advice we give too. I really struggle with it. It comes out sounding and feeling, well, awkward. Forced. Insincere. I don't like feeling insincere. Integrity is very important to me.

I feel in stories. Doesn't that sound weird? When a piece of music or a song generates an emotional reaction, a story forms in my mind. I'll even zone out filling in the details. Actually, just about any emotional time I can think of had a fictional story associated with it. I'll pull bits and pieces from things that interest me. I've created entire universes inside my head. All as a way of processing some emotion.

A friend of mine feels in color. Different colors represent different emotions. I find it quite fascinating. For me, different stories represent different emotions. Now here's where the real problem comes in - I don't consciously know what those feelings are. I don't think I could even tell the story. The act of putting it down loses all of the emotional content. And I most definitely cannot tell you what emotions it's processing. Maybe some larger, obvious ones. But the shades are all lost. Hidden behind a fog.

To speak in I statements, I have to translate from story into words. How do I do that when I don't know what the story means? It isn't until all is said and done that it finally clicks. Up to that point, all I have is the story of what happened. And I'm not the only actor. Sometimes, I'm not even the main one.

Fiction or Non-Fiction?

I knew someone who also told themselves stories. She told stories to change her reality. She believed her stories. At first, I used to wonder if my memory was going. If I had forgotten what happened. I finally realized this person imagined having conversations and convinced herself that they actually happened. Fantasy was an escape. And she lost the ability to distinguish it.

I know my stories aren't real. Just like I understand television isn't real. I don't know how to explain it. They're processed differently in my brain. And even if a story's going while someone is talking, there is a difference, a wall, between the two. I'm not sure why this seems important enough to write down.

I suspect that person is a covert narcissist. She would only speak rationally when I got angry. And yes, beating my head against a wall eventually makes me angry. Ironically, that only makes me angrier. In Romans, Paul talks about treating enemies with kindness to pour "burning coals of fire on their head". That was the first thing I thought of when I realized what was happening. Am I the one who's wrong and having burning coals dumped on my head?

Paul encourages us to love our enemies. The purpose of kindness is reconciliation. The kindness increases after it has it's effect. This person stopped their kindness after they got an excuse to be a victim. Their kindness is a lie designed for their own glory. God wants His kindness to flow through us and out into the world. His kindness doesn't end. It doesn't have a purpose other than the benefit of the other person. His kindness is proactive, not responsive. I think that's the difference.

Sounds like rationalizing, doesn't it? Believe you me, I can rationalize with the best of them. And yet I find peace in the words. So don't trust me. Don't take my word at face value. Ask the One who searches the heart of men. Who digs into our deepest motives. I believe this is what He asked me to write. And I believe His Son's blood covers the parts that I got wrong.

Conversations

So something weird happened today. I was discussing with my friend/co-worker some form we were submitting to a client. It was a quick conversation. One of us would begin a thought, and the other finished it.

Now I have a bad habit of trying to prompt people when they pause to think of a word. Not here. I actually finished her sentence. Correctly. The conversation gained an energy as this went back and forth. It was a new experience for me.

In college (oh, so many years ago), I read a book called A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken. I remember two things from that book. One, there's a species of goose that mates for life. And two, the author and his wife had a language all their own for communicating. He describes how they developed code phrases for faster or even clandestine communication. I remember thinking how much I wanted a closeness like that.

What struck me the most today was the gap between where I am and there. I mean, this is the first time in my entire life I've ever had a conversation like this. It's still a far cry from what's described.

I wonder in times like this if God gives glimpses of what should be just to keep me going. I'm grateful for it. And for a friend who's taken the time to communicate in ways I understand. God reminds me that I cannot accept the lie that everything I want is wrong.

C.S. Lewis describes us as bent in his trilogy Out of the Silent Planet. Elements of what God created are still present within us. We're off the mark, not completely divorced from it. We still have the desires that He put inside. Those desires aren't wrong. A lot of my own plans to fulfill those desires turn out to be wrong. Wanting it isn't.

I think the turning point really came when I finally accepted that Jesus' blood covers everything. I can approach God with exactly how I feel and what I want. I don't have to get it perfect. In His love, looking at me through His Son, He shows the difference. And He addresses the need - the real need. The real desire. It's amazing how my understanding of what I want changes every time I talk with Him. Layers I didn't even realize were there.

God created us in His image. He is deeper than we can comprehend. We go that deep too. But we are bent. It takes a lot of courage to face those dark layers. And it takes faith to remember, hope, dream that one day they'll be unbent. That God's love, focused through the lens of Jesus' sacrifice, will overwhelm them. And maybe I'll have more stunning conversations.

Thing 1, Thing 2

Two different things are bouncing around in my head. I'm not sure how they're related. A friend asked me to watch the movie Replica. The movie raises the question of what makes us human. The other thing involves the nature of sin. Let's start there.

There's one story about Jesus where the religious leaders brought a handicapped man to Him. They asked Jesus who's sin caused the handicap - the man's or his parents? Jesus gave the answer "neither".

I have to admit that my own mental workings make me susceptible to the temptation of rules. The lie that if you follow all of the rules then you're good. That's simply not born out here. Sin causes us to disobey, not the other way around.

Looking at the world from the rule's point of view, we're good until we break the rules. I think the Bible views it the other way around - we're bad so we break the rules. Sin is a spiritual state. We come into the world that way. The man's handicap came from sin. Not a sin, but sin as a general state.

Jesus wasn't good because He lived by all the rules. He lived by all the rules because He was righteous. Righteousness and sin have nothing to do with what we do. We are one or the other. And that dictates what we do.

Who We Are

So now the first point - what makes us human. The movie involves copying a person into a clone and into a machine. Yep, they managed to hit two science fiction memes at the same time. Both are based on the same premise - that you are nothing more than chemical mixtures and electrical states. These are things that can be copied from brain to brain to brain.

Except that we just discussed spiritual states that drive what we think and what we do. If we accept the spiritual, then we also accept that it sets those states, like a computer programmer who controls the transistor states through software. One changes the other to accomplish it's purpose.

Can that be copied?

Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. I thought I would tell you about my Mom. Yes, I know you know her. You've been to her house. You've heard her stories. I have a different story to tell you.

I remember Mom playing ball with us in the backyard. She would pitch, Uncle Scott and I batted and played outfield. We lived on the top of a hill. So our "field" slanted down. Grandmom was smart - she made Uncle Scott and I run after the ball. Believe it or not, I bat left handed because that was uphill. Weird, huh?

I remember going to school every day, for 12 years, with lunch. The school we went to (after 4th grade for me) didn't have a cafeteria. We ate lunch at our desks then went outside for a bit. Grandmom made our lunch. Not an easy task. Two boys (3 lunches with Aunt Jennie), conflicting tastes, and one picky eater. But she did it, every morning. Your Pop-pop went to work with lunch too. 

Yes, she taught us how to make our own. We learned the basics of spreading mayo, adding lunch meat, and grabbing a side out of the pantry. We could make our own lunch. She made it anyway.

I remember one summer when Grandmom taught us to do laundry. Okay, that only lasted until we ruined one of her dresses. Hey, she taught us on whites and said "add bleach". How was I supposed to know colors were different? We learned how to do laundry. And she did it anyway. I started doing my own when I went to college on my own. 

I remember running errands on day when Uncle Scott and I were younger. My Pop-pop and Mom were in the car. They decided to go out to Friendly's for lunch. Friendly's was an ice cream place. Still is, I believe. I remember Mom and Pop-pop arguing because both of them wanted to pay for lunch. Your Grandmom is a lot like my Pop-pop. 

I wonder if it ever occurred to her that she didn't have to make our lunch. Or that she didn't have to do our laundry. Or sweep the kitchen, vacuum the carpets, make beds, go grocery shopping, cook dinner every night, or any of the other things she did. All of them quiet, behind the scenes. My childhood was unremarkable. And I say that as a compliment. There were so many things I didn't know - bills, mortgages, hunger, because your Grandmom and Pop-pop bore the load. 

They taught us all of these things were coming. Grandmom spent a summer teaching us how to do a budget and play the stock market. It was kind of silly. But I like math so it wasn't all that bad. My point is, even though they did so much, they still prepared us for life. This is what it means to be a mother.

Proverbs 31 describes a woman who makes breakfast for her children. Expands the fortune of her husband. Works from morning until night seeing to the needs of the family. It says that her husband sits in the gates of the city. Do you know why? Because he didn't have to do all of that himself.

A mother's praise comes from her children and her husband. Her value, her worth, is found in her family. When you lose sight of that, when you look for your value outside, from other people, is when you have failed as a mother. I've seen mothers whose children are grown go back into the workforce. The ones who have strength of character make it there too. It isn't that mothers have no talent, it's that they use their talent for their family above themselves. Knowing, trusting, believing that it will be returned to them in ways that only God can.

Five Star Quality

I just wanted to continue our conversation from last night. I'm writing because then you can read it at your own pace. Or just ignore it. Whatever.

We were talking about this not being a 5 star restaurant. One of the books I have - Thou Shall Prosper - was written by a Jewish rabbi. He presents his points as "10 commandments for making money". It makes for a great structure - 10 commandments = 10 chapters. One of the chapters he focuses on the commerce, business, trade being Biblical. He makes the case that human beings have both a physical and spiritual aspect.

This is born out in both the Old and New testaments. We're created beings, but created in God's image. God is spiritual. Our spiritual aspect displays itself in rituals. We eat cooked food, at a table, with utensils. Animals kill it and eat it right there. "Leftovers" means it's been sitting for days and they probably get some flies with the meat.

Animals are physical beings only. Our spirituality comes out in ways we are different from animals - rituals. We say please and thank you. Animals will simply take. We sleep in beds. Animals sleep on the ground. We decorate out caves, I mean houses. Even going to the bathroom has a ritual. You use a toilet. We do something with the waste. Animals just go wherever and whenever. The author's point is that animals have no concept of money or trade. The idea that little pieces of paper can have value to trade for something else is just weird.

These extra things we do come from our spirit exerting control over the world around us. We impose order on a chaotic world. God could have created a perfect universe. One that did everything the right way. And it would have made a pretty picture. But that's all it would have been  - a picture.

Instead, He created a universe that required constant adjustment. That requires someone impose their will in order to make it function correctly. He created us as the conduit for the imposition. Instead of a picture, He created a universe where He interacts. We are His interaction. We are the variation, the creativity. And when our will aligns with His will, the universe responds to it. God brings life. We introduce His life, His creativity, into the world around us.

You're quite right, this dinky little apartment isn't a five star restaurant. I choose to do things nicely anyway. I choose to be creative, to make things more than they are. I like nice things. Not because of the things, not because of what I get, but because it makes something new. Something new to share with someone. I do it not for me, but for the people around me.

This is why you do what you do in the baby section. I'm just trying to draw the parallel between work and home. The difference between them is only in our minds. You are the same person at home as you are at work. We exert the same control for the same reason.

This is about discipline. It's hard. It's tiring. Trust me, I understand. I work too. And I'm tired when I come home. I can't tell you how many nights I have to make a conscious effort to cook dinner. I want to give up too. I want to hide away from responsibility too. Imposing your will on the world takes exertion. And I have such a limited amount of strength. This is the struggle that the Bible describes. Some days, rest is the right answer. Other days, work is the right answer. Telling the difference can be the hardest thing in the world. That's why it's so important that we rely on God.

This isn't at all what I imagined I'd write. But it is where He led me. I hope you enjoyed the journey.