Last times

There is, they say, a last time for everything. It is certainly true for me this (last) academic year. There are many last times.  I have graded the last quantum midterm, and today made up the last problem set for the class. Last week in intro chemistry, I taught VSEPR theory for the last time. It takes practice to be able to visualize the 3D structures of the molecules from the sketches that chemists make, and so I give them all a simple molecular model kit they can carry around. It all fits neatly into a centrifuge tube.

I bring all the pieces to class and have students assemble their own kits. This time when I went to put the extra bits and bobs away, tossing the little signs — “Take 3” — into the bag I realized with a start that I would not need these things again. I could just toss the signs and give away the 50 extra octahedral centers. Except I couldn’t. It seemed too…real. Too final.

Somehow the last things are less real when there is not actual stuff attached to them. Literally weightier, they feel metaphorically heavier, too. I repacked the bag and put it back in the cupboard. 

Maybe it is the time of year, not just my imminent retirement. The days are shorter, the sun struggles to climb high in the sky, and the readings at Mass are circling around the end times.

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VSEPR stands for valence shell electron pair repulsion and basically says that bonds around an atom will arrange themselves to be as far apart as they can because the electrons that make up the bonds repel. So if an atom has two other atoms bonded to it, they will be in a line (CO₂ is an example), 180^o apart. There are a dozen or so patterns based on this theory.

Centrifuge tubes are great for storing small amounts of stuff and you don’t have to be a scientist to buy them. They don’t usually leak, either.

Back to the ordinary

"We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming…" I created the document in mid-June. Forty-seven reflections to write (forty-eight if you count the preface), forty-seven meditations to design. An empty space waiting for words, or perhaps waiting on the Word. Twenty weeks and seventeen thousand words later, it's off to the editor.

These last few weeks in particular I feel like I have been living in Lent: walking toward to Jerusalem, jostled by the crowds, facing the Passion. The lectionary selections for Lent are like a greatest hits list, so bits and pieces appear in the Ordinary way of things. And each time they do I am momentarily disoriented. The Pharisee and the tax collector are praying...Is it Tuesday in the first week of Lent? or the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time? Or both?

I keep envisioning it as a Fourier transform experiment, hitting all the frequencies at once, then capturing the free induction decay and transforming it into the other domain, where each peak pops up out of the noise. It's just not clear which domain I am in when writing. (Apologies to the non-spectroscopists out there.)

For today I am grateful to be anchored back in a single time. 

Break glass in case of emergency

“Resolving all tensions is a hallmark of ideology. Easy answers and clear-cut solutions are what authoritarianism offers. Part of the task upon us today is to resist these lures.We must build up tolerance for complexity. We must train our capacity to hold things in tension. We must exercise our communal ability for nuance and contestation. Everywhere, discernment will be needed. Only so can we do justice to reality and to one another.” From For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional by Hanna Reichel

I fully admit that I bought the book because of its title. And because the current moment feels like an emergency, though I’m not quite sure where one pulls the alarm.

I’ve also been re-reading Tomáš Halík’s Touch the Wounds, a potent reflection on suffering and transformation. The strength of faith, he says, consists not of “‘unshakeable conviction’, but of the capacity to cope with doubts and ambiguities, to bear the burden of mystery, while maintaining…hope.” Faith now is an openness to the Incomprehensible, “radiant certainties” are for the life to come.

Obstinacy, stubbornness, the ability to hold onto to a position when it is challenged, would seem to be an asset when it comes to faith. But what if faith isn’t that at all, but a willingness to be open to mystery, open to reality, open to each other — open to the immense, incomprehensible, unfathomable divine. To be faithful is to let go of our certainties and be open to God.

So much of the rhetoric today is of certainties. Certain of what other people believe, certain of what God wants. To be certain that not one tittle of benefits goes to someone not entitled, we would strip benefits from many in genuine need. A miser’s measure for our sisters and brothers, not the full measure flowing over that we ourselves are promised.

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Photo is from Shermeee, used under a Creative Commons license.

CalMac cacophony

Math Man and I took a trip to one of the Inner Hebrides a few weeks ago. We rode a CalMac ferry from the mainland to Islay. Our ferry was running on schedule both coming and going but weather and an aging fleet means that you can’t alway count on the CalMac, see this NYT piece.  It was, as promised by Crash’s Scottish partner, an experience. The interiors reminded me of late 1970s Las Vegas casinos. There are reserved rows for pets on board, play areas for kids, famous CalMac mac and cheese and comfy seats with big windows to catch the view. It’s a lovely way to travel. At least as long as you remember to turn off your car alarm.

There are signs — which we missed. Crash texted us — but we didn’t see it until we had set sail (at which point the car decks are off limits to passengers). And we had a rental. Neither of our cars have motion sensitive alarms, so I had never given much thought to how car alarms are temporarily disabled.

The cacophony began as soon as the ramps closed with a bang. HOOT-HOOT. WHEE-AH-WHEE-AH. Soon there were a half dozen alarms going. Keys were grabbed and alarms silenced. Until the next wave. It was like a bunch of toddlers suddenly noticing their parents had left them with a sitter and wailing in surprise. I could see our car from the back deck. Suddenly its lights were flashing and it was hooting, too. I grabbed the keys and clicked. Whew. Five minutes later, I was doing it again. And again.

Math Man came out on deck and I explained the issue. “Can you show me the car?” I did. “Can we reset it from here?” “Shhh, it’ll hear you and wake up.” It did. Its side mirrors unfolded like a 2 year old begging to be picked up. And by now, I could recognize the wail of our car with the same spidey sense that I used to distinguish my baby's cry from the rest. I’d spend the rest of the voyage squelching the alarm. I gave up counting after a dozen.

On the way back we knew how to keep the baby quiet!

What looks like prayer

I was listening to Rachel Martin's podcast, Wild Card, last night. Her interviewee was Harrison Ford (listen here). The basic premise of the show is that guests pick a card with a question on it. They can skip one, and turn one back on the interviewer. Ford flipped this question back at Martin: "Is there anything in your life that feels like praying?"

What does prayer feel like to me?

Prayer is redolent of incense, of a milk-drunk baby, of a piece of toast caught just in time.  It can taste bitter and hot and bracing all at once, like that first cup of tea on a cold morning. It feels like cold salt water on my feet after a long walk, like my husband's hand reaching out in the night to brush away my bad dream.

What does prayer feel like to you?