JNLDETR

i was in the car with a friend today when i heard a police siren that reminded me of a weird dream i had last night. it starts with me sitting in my living room, feet propped up on the table. the sun is shining through the patio blinds, it's warm and fills up the whole room with light. i turn to a friend sitting beside me and ask, “why haven’t they been able to re-create sunlight? all our man made light sources don't come close really. you can easily tell the difference between a halogen, or fluorescent, or incandescent and real sunlight.” then my friend comments on how the sun is a giant ball of burning gas and wonders why it hasn’t run out yet. “who do you suppose created that first spark and lit it on fire?” he said. “god i think, but it really is amazing how it's been burning for millions of years and hasn’t run out yet,” i reply. then i start to wonder whether perhaps a million earth years equals a millisecond in universe time and that maybe we're stuck in time between the point of spark! the sun's on fire, and poof! it's out. just as i'm thinking about this, i was rudely awakened by an ambulance racing down my street. as it drives farther and farther away i remember the doppler effect (you know, from physics class??) and how when it was racing toward my apartment, the frequency of its siren was quite high, weewooweewooweeoo, and as it drove past and got farther away the siren's frequency became much lower, weeeeeewooooooweeeeeewoooooo…

what does that have to do with anything? well, being the huge nerd that i am, i remember watching a show on the history channel about this insane theory by an insane drugged out mathematician called timewave zero. in a nutshell, he developed this computer software that used an ancient chinese chart of 64 different symbols, giving each symbol a binary code, etc, etc (i’ll spare you the details/i don't remember most of it). in the end he came up with a graph that supposedly shows that all major world events occur because of a predictable rhythm of the universe that can be mathematically determined. this is what the end result looks like:

anyway, his theory, plus my dream with the sun and being stuck in time, resulted in a brand new theory that i am calling, john's non-linear doppler effect time relationship. so in JNLDETR, time is not so much linear, but more of a wave, much like light or sound. when the wave is at a low frequency, as in, the space between two adjacent peaks or troughs of the wave is very large, world events are sparse (each peak and trough representing a major world event). but as we travel along the wave of time, we are moving closer and closer to a single point of action, like the ambulance moving closer to my apartment (but reversed, with me moving closer to it instead). the frequency of time gets higher and higher as we get closer, leading to more significant world events in high concentration, until we finally reach the source, whatever it may be. what do you think? nobel prize worthy? someone out there has to appreciate my dorkyness right?

pride

it was raining a bit on my bike ride home from school today. it wasn't a particularly eventful day. a three hour lecture on removing permanent fixed prostheses, a lab demo, a long lunch break at the bodega, then another one hour lecture. on the way home i was feeling pretty good. i think it was a mixture of being well rested and feeling content about things. when it started to rain, i figured what the heck, why not get a little wet. i didn't pull the hood over my head, i just let it wash me. the day smelled good. like rain and fresh mulch with a hint of car exhaust. i love the start of spring. when the seasons change, it's always a surprise. it reminds me that seasons are changing in my life too. i've been feeling good and optimistic about things lately. i’ve come to realize that a large part of feeling content is finding purpose. feeling pride in something. take this anecdote for example. nasa develops a space suit that is capable of recycling your air, providing you with all necessary nutrients, and taking care of all your bodily needs for survival. an astronaut wearing the new suit accidentally drifts away from his spaceship and finds himself floating farther and farther away. eventually, everyone thinks he died and he's forgotten about. in the meantime, he finds himself floating around in space, orbiting the earth. he orbits for days, weeks, months, years. his hair grows down and begins to obstruct his view of the world (he can't brush it aside being in a space suit and all). he's just floating there, in total silence, cold, just him and his thoughts.

have you ever felt like that astronaut? just floating around pointlessly. hopeless, forgotten, insignificant. i would venture to say a lot of people get this feeling from time to time. it's not your fault, honestly. the world you and i live in wants so much to make us believe that we are pointless. karl marx (no, i'm not a communist) described in great length how our fast paced, industrialized world has changed us. back in the early days, man had a trade. the blacksmith was an expert in his field. he felt pride in the work of his hands. so did the carpenter, the fisherman, even the scholar. now-a-days, the great majority of people feel minimal to no pride in what they do. our work is mostly a means to pay the bills. a scholar back in the day, for instance, was someone who read because they were seeking actual knowledge and enlightenment, they also wrote themselves. now, they tell you, read this, read this, memorize this. you do it because you have to, just trying to get by. well, i could talk about this for ages, but what i'm getting at is that lately i've been feeling a lot of pride in what i do. my life up to this point was jumping a series of pointless hoops. they often made me feel fake and pointless myself. but now, especially this year, i am feeling really content and proud of my hard day's work. it's a weird new feeling. i think it's in our nature to create and to contribute. i picked up a new book, the screwtape letters (borders is closing so go get yourself some cheap books!). it's about a demon named screwtape, writing letters to his nephew, wormwood, guiding and giving him advice on how to take down man. in the first page he tells him not to try to convince man that what he believes is wrong, instead just confuse him with a lot of different ideas and wrong messages, so that he forgets what he's really worth and what he's capable of. me and you, we’re capable of a lot. don’t let the world convince you otherwise!

repentance

(it has been brought to my attention that my posts are way too long. it's true. so skim through this first paragraph if you want, i get to the point in the second)

so for the past few weeks, i've been trying to sneak in a bit of reading here and there between school, clinic stuff, and studying. i'm reading c.s. lewis' mere christianity and it has been taking a bit longer than expected. something i found interesting is how he claims that nothing in the universe is simple. god isn't simple and life isn’t either (neither is his book for that matter). a table may seem like a simple thing at first, but if you look at it scientifically, the fact that it's made up of atoms and how light reflects from its surface and reaches your eye, travels along your optic nerve, where chemical messengers in your brain relay the information as 'table' etc, etc, it's really not all that simple. it's a mystery how it all works really. lewis argues that our understanding of god need not be simple either. atheism on the other hand, he says, is too simple. he says one argument against god is that the universe seems meaningless. he admits he has held this view himself at one point. but his argument against it really is quite brilliant. i'll summarize, although i'm sure i won’t be doing it enough justice. he basically says that the fact that he is able to claim that the universe has no meaning, proves that it has meaning. for example, one can't call a line crooked without knowing what a straight line looks like. or if a man falls in water, he feels wet, whereas a fish, if dropped in water does not. the man is not a water creature, so when he is in water, knows he ought to be dry. so the fact that he recognizes 'wetness' as being bad and undesirable is directly related to his knowledge of 'dryness' as being good and right. yeah, pretty confusing. okay, here's the best metaphor i found, in his own words, "if the whole universe has no meaning, we should have never found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there was no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should have never known it was dark. 'dark' would be a word without meaning."

what i really wanted to talk about was something i read a few chapters later. staying true to the complexity of it all, lewis tries to explain the death of christ. he argues against the idea that christ died so that he could bear the punishment instead of us. he says that god could have just forgiven us and let us off the hook. what's the point in killing an innocent person? christ's death he says (i absolutely love his interpretation), is all about one thing. repentance. repentance is a complicated concept. it involves humiliation, suffering, surrender, submission, and even death. you’re killing part of yourself, admitting your wrongs, un-learning your self-conceit, and purifying your soul. only a bad person needs to repent (this is hypothetical, since in reality we're all bad and all need repentance) and only a good person can repent perfectly. so basically, the worse you are, the more you need to repent and the less you can do it. to repent perfectly requires a good person, and they don't need repentance. so now what? well, this is where god comes into play. little bits and pieces of the nature of god are found in us. love, compassion, intellect, etc. but the one thing we need help with, repentance, is not found in god's nature at all. god doesn’t surrender, or suffer, or die. "the one road for which we now need god's leadership most of all is a road god, in his own nature, has never walked." if our nature which can surrender, and suffer, and die is somehow made one with the nature of god, then a magical thing happens. he could do all these things which we can do as men, and he can do them perfectly because he is the ultimate good, he is god. he will suffer, when he need not suffer at all, in order to achieve perfect repentance on behalf of all mankind.

:-)

change

a few days ago, a professor on a history channel program was discussing this theory that every power for good is eventually corrupted. a ruling force, or emerging country, or government for instance, has a very limited time frame of peace and prosperity before it becomes oppressive once again. the time frames vary, but the general consensus is that there is a golden era, where the positive ideals are upheld and the wheel seems to be turning in the right direction before it eventually slows, stops, and turns the other way. i wondered why this might be. seems like an awfully bleak way to look at the world really.

with what's been going on in egypt for the past week, i've been having a lot of internal conflict, highs and lows, about the situation. on one hand, the people deserve more rights and freedoms. on the other, they need the rule of law and stability. mubarak's government gave them the latter. too much stability in fact, where many felt that the world was moving forward while they remained stagnant. rule of law was present, although it was harsh, oftentimes wrong, and not all encompassing, as some could bypass it by being members of the elite class or having inside connections. his government is/was oppressive. it oppressed fundamentalist islam (which many were thankful for) and likewise oppressed the christian minority. many have said that the sole reason for oppressing the copts was so that the people would not claim that the government was choosing sides. in a sense, the government wanted to be equally oppressive. but while this was a temporary solution to an ever-growing social problem, clearly it could not last forever. even if mubarak stays in power, he won't live forever. eventually we have to face our demons and realize that fatal problems exist not only in our ruling powers but also in ourselves. i've been praying every day this week that the revolution not only be one against the government, but be a revolution of our hearts. if freedom came to egypt, would our golden era last a week or a hundred years?

god created all of us. every single one of us was created in his image. his 'image' is our capacity for good. our love. it can be hard sometimes to look at someone who doesn’t share our beliefs and treat them as an equal. we all have this rotten feeling that 'others' were created from different soil.

please lord, i'm not going to pray for you to change the world. i'm praying for you to change me, to change us, so that we become the change we want to see in the world (gandhi put it best). lord, you're capable of anything. yet, you don't concern yourself with the rise and fall of empires and powerful men. you're only interested in our hearts turning to you and returning to the light once again. please jesus, let this week, and every week, be a revolution of our hearts. lord, i hope i'm not being naive in my request. you told us that with faith, nothing is impossible. please hold our hands as we take our first steps. you've never abandoned us before and i know you don't plan on it now, or ever.