Sometimes Magic
A world that I think I have to be able to explain scientifically or that I think I want to explain, is boring. Or maybe what I mean is this: If I have to go through the rigors of explanation for my experience of life, that is boring. Life and all its amazing moving parts has an explanation, a theory. Maybe my experience does too, but I don‘t care. I don‘t have time.
If I reduce the connectedness I feel in the world to rushes of chemicals in my brain, I will be bored and wrong. I know I will be wrong because we don‘t know what we think we know about much of anything in science. I have earned my right to say this because I work in a very applied science. All the time I encounter the unexpected. It is not magic in those moments, it is that my scope is too narrow, pointed in the wrong direction or clouded by my expectations, pretense, ego. Life is surprising, erratic.
Science often does not want to incorporate the chaotic elements in the theory because the math gets complex very quickly. But chaos is what I see all the time. Our breath is not regular and that is a good thing. We need to sigh and yawn to open up all the little air ways at the very end of the lung. Sometimes the appendix is on the left side instead of the right, and even though I can explain it, I can‘t predict it and don‘t want to.
All this to say that I am in Hana, Maui. The mist rolls down verdant hills at the base of Haleakala. It is seven in the morning. The light is golden here. The arc of Hamoa Bay ends in a perfect dark sand beach. The scent of plumeria swirls around us. Plumeria are highly unlikely flowers that grow at the end of leafless branches on trees that other wise look dead. They might be the most beautiful, fragrant flowers I have seen. Beautiful local people sat with me in the grass of a church here and told me their stories and listened to my own for two hours in the evening yesterday, hugged me like I was one of their own. I was. I am.
Maybe you would say these are all just things I have not seen and newness makes us believe in magic. It is ignorance that starts that process toward magic and then experi ence tempers us and allows truth in. Maybe. Being tempered means to be hardened, like steel. I don‘t want to be hardened. I want to stay supple, open. I want the surprise to raise the question over and over in me, like the waves rolling in to Hamoa Bay in magical Hana.
Sometimes Magic
A world that I think I have to be able to explain scientifically or that I think I want to explain, is boring. Or maybe what I mean is this: If I have to go through the rigors of explanation for my experience of life, that is boring. Life and all its amazing moving parts has an explanation, a theory. Maybe my experience does too, but I don‘t care. I don‘t have time.
If I reduce the connectedness I feel in the world to rushes of chemicals in my brain, I will be bored and wrong. I know I will be wrong because we don‘t know what we think we know about much of anything in science. I have earned my right to say this because I work in a very applied science. All the time I encounter the unexpected. It is not magic in those moments, it is that my scope is too narrow, pointed in the wrong direction or clouded by my expectations, pretense, ego. Life is surprising, erratic.
Science often does not want to incorporate the chaotic elements in the theory because the math gets complex very quickly. But chaos is what I see all the time. Our breath is not regular and that is a good thing. We need to sigh and yawn to open up all the little air ways at the very end of the lung. Sometimes the appendix is on the left side instead of the right, and even though I can explain it, I can‘t predict it and don‘t want to.
All this to say that I am in Hana, Maui. The mist rolls down verdant hills at the base of Haleakala. It is seven in the morning. The light is golden here. The arc of Hamoa Bay ends in a perfect dark sand beach. The scent of plumeria swirls around us. Plumeria are highly unlikely flowers that grow at the end of leafless branches on trees that other wise look dead. They might be the most beautiful, fragrant flowers I have seen. Beautiful local people sat with me in the grass of a church here and told me their stories and listened to my own for two hours in the evening yesterday, hugged me like I was one of their own. I was. I am.
Maybe you would say these are all just things I have not seen and newness makes us believe in magic. It is ignorance that starts that process toward magic and then experi ence tempers us and allows truth in. Maybe. Being tempered means to be hardened, like steel. I don‘t want to be hardened. I want to stay supple, open. I want the surprise to raise the question over and over in me, like the waves rolling in to Hamoa Bay in magical Hana.