Zombies revisited

Crash and Math Man were due to rendezvous in a Chicago airport tonight, then fly home to Philly.  Crash's plane had mechanical difficulties and had to return to Seattle.  He's still waiting for a flight to Chicago, so won't get to Philly until tomorrow.  Meanwhile, Math Man's plane is delayed.    The Boy and I are beat, a combination of late nights, early mornings and jet lag. Zombie-like would be a good description.

Meanwhile, Crash is passing the time writing about zombies other than his family.  Better yet, he writing about the odd culture he has encountered on his travels:

"3:58 PM PDT - I approach the altar. The red-clad priestess assures me that we will take care of you. I do not who this we is, but she hands me numerous slips of paper. One, she insists, is worth much money and the others will grant me passage home. It looks like no money I have yet seen in this strange land, but I accept it and await further instructions."  And the revolt....

The Courage to Blink: Poetry and Spiritual Direction

What does it mean to be religious? What does it mean to be a religious writer? a religious poet?

Tim O'Brien SJ courageously plunges into these waters at The Jesuit Post, writing about Krista Tippet's recent interview with poet Marie Howe. (H/T to Fran and her daily FB round-up). Can you be a religious poet without intending to be a religious poet?

Meanwhile, a recent op-ed in the New York Times is looking at people who subscribe to a belief in higher power, but profess to be atheists. (Though I have to admit the first thought I had when I read anthropologist Tanya Luhrman's excellent and thought provoking op-ed "Addicted to Prayer" was not "wow, this a great piece to use in my class on contemplative practices to start the conversation about whether they need to be embedded in a particular tradition" but that the young woman who was so distressed by the intensity of her prayer needed a spiritual director.)

My response to this pair of articles is currently up at CatholicPhilly. 

"Trappist monk and poet Thomas Merton once wrote, “Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.”

When it comes to being spiritual and religious, perhaps the poets can give us the courage to see the world with different eyes — eyes of faith — and the spiritual directors can help us develop the wisdom to know when to blink."

 Read the rest at CatholicPhilly.com

Python mom

The Boy got a Raspberry Pi (a small very, very inexpensive computer) from his uncle, Geek Guru, for Christmas. He brought it with him to California and yesterday the two of them spent much of the day trying to get an LED to light up on command. They downloaded and updated, The Boy learned some vi (an editor), some more Python (a programming language). The LED lit up, it flashed, a series of LEDs flashed. There was much cheering coming from the dining room.

He wanted to play again tonight, but Geek Guru went out to dinner with his wife No-No Nannette (for their 25th wedding anniversary). So I'm sitting at the kitchen table listening to The Boy gripe about the vagaries of using vi to edit a file on a Mac (the mapping of commands to keys is a bit of an issue). I taught him to keep a backup of a working piece of code, and to edit only the copy. I advised on Python where I could (I'm a pale substitute for my brother on this one; Geek Guru is a nationally recognized Python expert).

I helped him figure out one bug in his Python code, and when the LED lit up, he leaned over to me and said, "You are the best mom ever." You've heard of tiger moms? I'm a python mom.

Outsourced prayer

I subscribe to a service that will do the occasional task for me — or at least anything legal that can be done by someone with a phone, internet connection and common sense. It's great for scheduling and for tracking down odd bits of this and that. This morning they rolled out a beta test of a new service, which looks at my calendar and suggests which task they might be able to take off my hands. So I awoke to an email which offered to take "morning prayer" off my hands every day.

When I joked about this in the kitchen this morning, my sister-in-law No-No said, "but isn't that what the monks are for?" True enough, priests, deacons and religious offer the Liturgy of the Hours on behalf of the Church, so that we can rise to Paul's challenge in Thessalonians to "pray unceasingly."

For the record, I didn't take them up on the offer — though I wonder what they would have done if I'd send them the texts — or a link to the Virtual Abbey? It's legal.

Light from light

The Boy spent today visiting two colleges in LA near my brother The Artiste. He had an interview, an information session and a tour at each. The (always very independent) Boy and Crash went to the information sessions and took the tours, while Math Man and I wandered around the campuses, checking out the science buildings. I saw a sign pointing the way toward a James Turrell Skyscape and got excited.

I had seen some of Turrell's work in Japan two years ago. The interplay of light with light in Turrell's work is breathtakingly beautiful (perhaps literally, to view one of the pieces in his current exhibit at the LA County Museum of Art you must sign a waiver  that you understand the potential health hazards in viewing). The solidity of some of the forms Turrell creates from light fascinates my quantum mechanical persona. Matter is not as solid as you think, you can diffract electrons and helium atoms — they act as if they are light. You can write a wave equation to describe molecules, just like light. Turrell makes the case that light is more solid than you think. Maybe I will take my quantum mechanics class on a field trip to the Guggenheim in NYC before the exhibit there closes.

The Skyscape installation at Pomona runs every morning beginning 100 minutes before sunrise (and again at sunset, starting about half an hour before the sun sets). The sky is framed above water, and you sight and contemplate the deep blue plane that seems to be suspended over your head. It's contemplative, slowly unfolding. It fosters patient attention.

This afternoon we're off to see the Turrell exhibit at LACMA.