The Subversive Power of Joy

April 18, 2020April 19, 2020 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ 1 Comment

sub·ver·sive

/səbˈvərsiv/ – adjective: seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution.

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The last little over a month has been tough for us in the US, hasn’t it? I remind myself, though, that this COVID-19 epidemic has been stretching thin the lives of millions of people around the world for much longer than it has ours. I’m, so far, one of the privileged ones who still has a job, whose family is healthy, who has a close network of loved ones and dear friends who check in on me daily, and who is well cuddled by two cats and a dog who seem to sense the crisis we’re in and insist on more snuggle time with me at day’s end.

I’m sure that I am no different from everyone else when I say that I’m bewildered by this whole pandemic. The logic adds up in my head about how it could arrive and throw us into absolute turmoil, yet COVID’s unexpected entrance didn’t seem to give us enough time to prepare and ground ourselves for what it was bringing with it. I daily get that odd sense of, “What if this is just a really extended weird dream, a Ground-hog Day-ish kind of experience, and tomorrow I’ll wake up and things will be completely back to normal?” But then I wake up, after sleeping in ridiculously late because suddenly I can on many days of the week, and we’re still here in the same place of isolation and uncertainty.

There is so much fear, tension, and irritability that is present around us right now. But, as someone who is an apocalyptomist ( a word Facebook recently fashioned that fits my personality pretty well sometimes – where I believe shit is going to hit the fan and yet everything will somehow still turn out OK), I simply refuse to throw in the towel and give in to despair, even when I look at the data and it feels like the most realistic option. I choose to find joy wherever I can, whenever I can. And I’m learning more and more, especially now, that sometimes joy doesn’t look or necessarily feel like you would expect. It can only be found when you’re watching for it, and when you, at a gut level, believe that it wants to be found. Joy is subversive, because it has the power to completely change a situation from the inside out, unexpectedly. It can take the most bitter of moments and transform them into something that may still be painful, but can no longer overwhelm us.

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Last night, twenty minutes before shift change, I slipped into the room of a patient of mine who was dying, to see if the last dose of morphine I had given was lessening their air hunger and to see if they were comfortable. I was tired, as every nurse is at the end of shift, even more so these days because of the emotional and mental fatigue that happens with constantly changing policies, wondering if we’re doing good enough at infection prevention, and constantly watching the patient assignment board to see how full or empty our unit has become.

My patient was breathing rapidly, shallowly…but peacefully. I pulled up a chair next to the bed, slumped into it, and sat, just breathing with them, until it was time to go give report to the night shift nurses. It blows my mind, that time after time when I sit with a dying person, how I feel like I received a gift in some way. Like….who am I to be able to witness the closing of the curtain on the hours of this one person who has never existed before and will never exists exactly like this again? It’s similar in a way, I think, to when a baby is born, and you’re in awe at the miracle of life and wondering what kind of life this little one will lead, and what they will experience. Sitting with the dying…I usually have no clue what kind of life they led. I don’t always know if they were a kind person, or a bitter person, an over-achiever or someone content with an average life. I don’t know if they ever felt seen, heard, or were well-loved. But there is the gravitas of knowing that they were a small bit of divinity incarnated for the briefest of moments in time, and that their life mattered no matter what form it took. The life finale of everyone should be held carefully and with reverence. I firmly believe this.

Somehow, in these kinds of moments, I am often surprised by joy. Not a happiness that they are dying or leaving behind loved ones. Not a superficial emotion that suddenly makes me feel like everything is all better. No, it is a deep, gratitude-awe state that I was allowed to be here, now, in this one moment where the life/death veil thins.

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I have belly laughed more in the last month than I have in the previous six months combined, which really says alot because I usually laugh all the time. I have friends on The Facebook who regularly post tremendous content, but everyone has upped their game lately. One thing that I am particularly enjoying is that so many of the wonderful memes and jokes being posted are entirely irreverent and often over the top, but it’s like people are even more willing at the moment to lay aside their social inhibitions and lay it all out there to soften the blow of the coronavirus with humor.

Even on my unit, when we’re rushing around, hot and sweaty in our personal protective equipment, trying not to think too hard about the fact that the majority of our patients are COVID – positive, I’m amazed at how much I laugh on each shift. There is nothing better than having hard stops for laughter during crazy days when we’re all tired and frustrated. It’s the joy that sneaks in with that laughter that has the power to change the mood in a room, to give us all just a little more motivation to push through the day, to pause our griping for just long enough to remind us that we’re in this together.

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“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how”. AND “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

I’ve been thinking that the important ways to get through this COVID crisis emotionally intact are to reframe the way we see what is happening, to shift our perspectives, question everything, and fully embrace the silver linings when we find them. If we can only view COVID as an evil villain that has swooped in and is destroying our way of life and mercilessly killing us, then what else is there for us but to despair and be terrified of when the reaper might also come for us. But, best as I can tell, this is a very myopic way of looking at life, one that is devoid of the understanding of the power that joy can bring into any situation.

I’m a realist most of the time, and I don’t think I’m a Pollyanna. But I do believe almost everything in life is nuanced, and complex, and can’t be adequately described with simple labels. Although this may sound trite and horrifying to some people, I really don’t think that we can deny that COVID, despite its fury and swift progression, has brought us some real blessings if we choose to look for them. (I will also completely admit that I’m in a more privileged situation than many people, and am not sitting here having to worry about where my next paycheck or groceries are going to come from, or wonder if I”ll have adequate access to medical care despite my race or socioeconomic status. I, in no way, want to minimize the difficult and trying circumstances of others with what I’m writing here. ) Hasn’t it forced us to slow down from our breakneck pace of life? Hasn’t it forced us to reevaluate our priorities? Hasn’t it forced us to become very intentional about who we do life with and make us put real effort into finding ways to maintain relationships? Hasn’t it made us stop and look at those around us with a little more compassion and empathy? Hasn’t it forced us to become the best of our creative selves? Hasn’t it shown us that the world is small, we are a global community, and we must work together if we are going to get through this?

I don’t really understand life. I’m suspicious of anyone who says they’ve got it figured out. I don’t REALLY know why we’re here on this spinning ball in a tiny little spiral galaxy amidst billions of other galaxies. But I am convinced that it does us well to try and find meaning and purpose in what we experience. For me, this exploring everything I encounter for meaning is a very selfish pursuit…I want to find the joy in everything. This is, for me, what makes life worth living. And so far, there really haven’t been many places in life where I haven’t been able to find at least a little joy. The thing is, joy is abundant when you learn how to find it, when you figure out the secret places it lies hidden in plain sight. Maybe learning to find this joy is part of the task of growing up as a person.

And while I certainly don’t believe God sent us COVID as retribution for anything, there are lessons to be learned from this experience, and maybe we can all collectively grow up a little more as we face the decision to either give up from despair or daily seek joy and meaning, moment by moment.

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Here’s an important fact: Joy is a function of gratitude. You can take that one to the bank.

If I’ve learned anything in life, it is that if you can’t be grateful and if you can’t seem to recognize any of the areas where you are blessed or given things that you don’t deserve, then it’ll be really hard to find joy in much.

I’ve referenced this before in a different post, but Ann Vosskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts, is an excellent primer on learning to record the small things in life you are thankful for. The recognition of all these things, however trivial, have the power to spark joy. It takes practice, but if you look hard enough, you can find things to be thankful for in any situation. Gratitude is a wildfire; when you change your mindset to focus in on the little things that are good, the little things that make your heart beat a few paces faster, the little things that bring you a sigh of contentment and peace…then everything begins to change and you can spot things you are thankful for everywhere. And the realization that you carry more thankfulness than you had realized, and that good things exist all around you amidst the struggles….well, that’s joy.

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In a recent On Being podcast, Krista Tippett interviewed the Benedictine monk, Br. David Steindl-Rast. During their talk, he described joy as the “happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.”

This is exactly why joy has the power to change everything….because it can exist independent of circumstances. Joy can overthrow the tyranny and fear of institutions and pandemics through its existence as a choice. Life may seem like absolute hell, but we always have the freedom to find gratitude, and we always have the freedom to seek out joy. This is where the meaning in life is, and no one can ever take it from us; we can only choose to give those up ourselves.

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“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
― Rumi

Don’t waste this time of sorrow. Don’t come to the end of the COVID pandemic bitter and cynical about life. Let sorrow work its way through you, mourn and grieve what is being lost, and then choose to look up with new eyes to see the new things that are coming. Don’t just think about what is no longer here, what is being taken from you. Be overjoyed about the new spaces present within you, the new wineskins that are capable of holding big life and fresh joy.

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The following is a song about joy, in my opinion. It was written as a song about faith, but I’m stretching the boundaries on it. Joy is the subversive power in life that can show us the beautiful, to fill us up again, to help us see everything with new eyes, and to experience a world that is bigger, deeper, and more meaningful than the superficial one we often limit ourselves to.

When The Resurrection You’re Given Isn’t The Resurrection You Were Expecting

April 12, 2020April 12, 2020 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ Leave a comment

A couple of years ago, the pastor of the church I attended at tbe time gave a brilliant sermon about Easter morning. In a quite unexpected shift, he spoke of that glorious morning a couple thousand years ago, how the stone was thrown away from the opening of the tomb where the Lord had been laid to rest, trumpets blaring, angels rejoicing in boisterous song, all of creation roaring wild and exuberant praise at the resurrection of Jesus. This tale of Easter morning was quite the juxtaposition to the one I had heard all of my life. It was the story one would expect to hear about the God-Man being raised from the dead…with victorious, indignant, middle-finger raised to death and suffering.

But a resurrection full of fanfare and celebration and trumpet blasting wasn’t what happened at all. Rather, resurrection morning was quiet, secret, and revealed to only a small handful of people…and certainly not the people you’d think God would want to shove the glory of the resurrection into the faces of. In fact, it took alot of convincing many of Jesus’ followers that the resurrection had even happened, much less the Romans. In some ways, it kind of feels like death still won that day even though life managed to slip in through the backdoor, largely unnoticed. Whether or not you believe that an actual, physical resurrection took place…that question in some ways is irrelevant… why would the Gospel texts include a story of Jesus making a comeback that seemed so…lackluster?

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I attended Easter services on Zoom this morning, gathered with a beloved church family I used to be a part of when I lived in New York State. I am now proud to be counted as a virtual member. The pastor of this group also happens to be one of my dearest friends, a person who is one of the wisest, kindest people I know, a woman who is fiercely loyal to me and constantly encourages me onward even when she sees me at my worst.

This morning she spoke of hiding, and how we who are staying at home instead of physically attending Easter church are in some ways similar to those who were hiding during the days surrounding Jesus’ death. Both of our hidings are rooted in fear…the fear of what might happen if we venture out too far beyond our homes. Just as the disciples and other followers of Jesus faced an uncertain future, so do we not know exactly where our resurrection from COVID will come from and when, even if there will eventually be a resurrection of new life that feels safe and good.

This “hiding” is dreadful and lonely. I’m trying to keep a stiff upper lip about it, especially considering that when all is said and done, my situation is far better than that of so many people in the world right now. But today…I broke down and cried. Cried because I hate feeling like a pariah among many people in my life because of what I may carry home from the hospital, who feel like they have to slather themselves in hand sanitizer after brushing something I’ve touched. Cried because the lack of intimate physical touch by loved ones completely undoes me. Cried because I don’t know if I’m making the right decisions for my children during these times. Cried because I daily have multiple people asking me my opinion on what they should do regarding this or that COVID-related issue and I hope I give decent answers but most of the time I just don’t know. Cried, because this hiding is a form of dying, something I write all the time about in this dumb blog that we need to learn to embrace so that we can wake up spiritually, but God damn, dying still hurts like hell and today I don’t feel like dying.

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That morning, a couple of years ago, as I listened to my pastor talk about how we would have expected the resurrection to burst forth wildly instead of how it actually did in relative anonymity, my mind began to explore how we sometimes view our mini-resurrections in life.

If we are honest about it, we don’t always like the resurrections we are given. And sometimes that makes it really hard to want to die, because we don’t really know what we have waiting for us on the other side.

The author of Hebrews wrote that “for the glory set before him, Jesus endured the cross.”

Did Jesus REALLY know the full extent of glory that would be waiting for him on the other side of death? Because I have a hard time believing he would have spent so long in the garden of Gethsemane praying, sweating, and reprimanding his followers for not staying vigilant if he had known that everything was going to work out well for him in the end.

We all want to know that our dyings will not be in vain, that they will be worth something and bring us to a better place. I’m not talking about just a physical death where we’ll end up in the great by and by or the ultimate mingling of souls or whatever…but our daily dyings…those places where we let go of our ego attachments, where we sacrifice for the betterment of others, where we do hard things with the hopes that we will discover our truest selves. And right now, we all as a collective want to be reassured that staying home, going untouched, wrecking the economy, and trying to love each other through social media will not be in vain.

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There’s an old song sung by The Cathedrals, a gospel quartet that I grew up listening to, that I’m thinking of now. It’s called Sunshine and Roses, and while the tune is catchy, I used to get so annoyed at the lyrics. I’ll explain why in a second. Here’s the song if you’re interested in taking it back a few years:

I USED TO SING A SAD SONG, FILLED WITH GRAY SKIES AND RAIN
I USED TO SING OF NO FUTURE, SAD DAYS WITH ONLY PAIN
NOW AS I LOOK BACK UPON THEM, SEEMS TOME THAT I FIND
THERE WERE DAYS IN THE VALLEY, NOW I’VE LEFT THEM ALL BEHIND

NOW IT’S SUNSHINE AND ROSES, ONLY A THORN NOW AND THEN
COOL STREAMS, WARM BREEZES, SINCE JESUS TOOK MY HAND
GREEN MEADOWS AND LAUGHTER, HOPE WITHIN A CRUMBLING TIME
IT’S SUNSHINE AND ROSES, ONLY A THORN NOW AND THEN

I NEVER MISS THE OLD WAYS, YET THINK BACK FROM TIME TO TIME
TO THOSE DAYS OF NO PURPOSE, WHEN MY LIFE HAD LITTLE RHYME
THOUGH THE WATERS DRUNK BE BITTER, THEY MUCH SWEETER MAKE THE TASTE, OF ONE DROP OF GOD’S BLESSING, BLESSING
GIVEN BY HIS GRACE

Oh my word! Even when I was a kid, with little life experience, this song used to make me want to throw up in my mouth. What a misrepresentation of Christianity and spirituality, in general! Since when did following Jesus become about sunshine and roses, cool streams, and warm breezes? I really don’t think Peter was whistling this tune as he was crucified upside down. I doubt as brave as Polycarp was, he likely wasn’t dancing into the fire proclaiming, “Tis but a thorn!”

No, the real task of following the teachings of Jesus is a matter of dying every day, sometimes multiple times a day, and hoping to God that you’ll get a resurrection on the other end of it. And it’s a matter of trusting and sweating prayers, that the resurrection you get will make those deaths feel not in vain. Whoever is selling you “sunshine and roses Jesus” is feeding you snake-oil religion.

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Years ago I visited a leper colony in West Africa. I remember walking down a line of men whose bodies had been grossly disfigured by the disease, shaking their hands and looking them each in the eyes. And I remember how after they each took my hand, they would touch their foreheads and then their hearts. I remember asking one of the local missionaries what this meant, and was told it was a traditional way of fully accepting one’s greeting into themselves. I thought at the time that it was poignant and sweet, especially among a group of people that so often do not receive significant physical touch. Now, after going for long periods without being touched and, when I am touched, feeling as though the people touching me are reticent to do so, I understand the need to accept fully into the body whatever touch is received…cherishing it….bringing it into the mind and heart and holding it carefully, recognizing that loving, meaningful touch should never, ever be taken for granted. Maybe I had to die in this way, to lose so much of the physical and emotional contact that I need and crave, to be able to never again underestimate the value of it for both me, and for others.

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I wonder if sometimes we have the wrong idea about resurrection. Like, do we think that we are just supposed to be handed a nice resurrection as a thanks or prize for being willing to die to ourselves or for something greater than ourselves? Or is resurrection a process…not a one time event…that we are invited to be a part of? Maybe we are co-creators in our resurrections?

What if the resurrection of Jesus was not simply the moment breath entered his body and the stone was rolled away from the tomb? And what if our ideas about the nature of resurrection are all wrong? What if resurrection is not sunshine and roses, but it can still be resurrection even when struggle is present, when uncertainty exists?

What if resurrection is mainly about the springing forth of new possibilities that hadn’t existed before? What if it is life reimagining itself…not because it had been conquered by death, but because death was the gift…the catalyst…that was necessary for this imagination to blossom?

What if we don’t like the resurrections we are handed in life because we don’t see them for what they really are? We wanted to be handed a finite package of perfection and bliss, when really, we are handed something far greater….the open-ended expanse of possibility and “what will we create out of this”-ness?

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I”m kind of excited now, as I write this because I”m seeing Easter morning in a whole new way. Maybe, just maybe….the calm, quiet, secret return of Jesus was from a God who was curious to see what we would do with this new possibility for life. If Jesus had burst forth from the grave in such a way that no one could ever doubt it, and everyone was suddenly compelled to fall before him out of fear and reverence for his power….that would be a good narrative climax. But an even better story is one where God offers a “create your own ending” by handing us endless possibilities wrapped up in a peaceful Easter morning, instead of a loud, triumphant, one-time event.

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Could it be that we have to be just as brave to resurrect as we have to be to die?

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EASTER BLESSING

“On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry — old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling — and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.

We don’t realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren’t put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.”

John O’Donohue
Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey

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The Art and Science of Discovering Truth

April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 ~ juliemonroe1980 ~ 1 Comment

phasechange — **Photo credit: IBM Research; Phase-change neurons. A chip with large arrays of phase-change devices that store the state of artificial neuronal populations in their atomic configuration.**

*This is a processing post, going all over the place…I do not claim to have an absolute handle on truth or how to get to it…so hang with me.

“Science is a way of thinking, more than it is a body of knowledge.” – Carl Sagan

Last week I was chatting with someone about our college days and what we majored in. He knew I had a science background but was unaware that I also had a degree in Missions from the Christian university I attended, eons ago it feels like. He asked what that major was about, and I told him it likely would not interest him because it was basically about proselytizing around the world and trying to bring people to Jesus, with a bit of humanitarian work added in for good measure. I frankly am a little embarrassed these days to admit I have this degree, mainly because while I totally think people should explore who Jesus was and the rich spirituality that can come from Christianity, the last thing I want to do is to manipulate people into thinking they’re going to hell in a handbasket if they haven’t been “saved”. That being said, the degree was a valuable resource for teaching me to become more globally aware and less ethnocentric. If I’m honest about it, the degree probably inadvertently helped lead me away from an evangelical bent because it encouraged me to be more open-minded and look beyond myself and the ways of living I grew up with. I gained alot of anthropological insights and cultural sensitivity out of those classes and “mission trips”.

The person I was talking with used to do research in a field called atomically precise manufacturing, and I’ve since decided after hearing him give a talk on the subject, that in my next life I am going to hunker down, force myself to take those additional calculus and physics classes that I avoided in college, and pursue a career in physical chemistry. Fascinating stuff, I tell you, and some of it dovetails with the analytical chemistry research I did as an undergrad. Is it too late to change career directions, AGAIN?

As we talked about his work on APM, and how doing good science is important to both of us, it occurred to me that maybe the rigorous pursuit by scientists, academics, and researchers to get people to pay attention to science….basically proselytizing people to science… is really no different than when people from a faith tradition go out and try to get other people to join them by means of persuasion, guilt, or shaming. I didn’t really like to come to this conclusion at first, because sometimes I think of science as a little mini-god…well-done science as an absolute that can’t really be argued with…like if people would just use their brains they would all come to the same conclusions. Then my self-arrogance-o-meter kicked in and I recognized that my thought train was a privileged one and that maybe I should think about this topic more.

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There is good science, and there is bad science. But there is also good religion/spirituality, and there is bad religion/spirituality. While it can sometimes be difficult to parse out the differences, both of these require a determination to avoid laziness and quick answers. Good science is not churned out as quick responses when questions are posed, and good spirituality requires long spans of living out hard questions and refusing to grab on immediately to the fuzzy, feel-good platitudes of cheap, easy, and superficial religion.

There are alot of things about Christianity that I grew up believing that I now look back on with incredulity. How did I believe some of those ideas for so long, and let them intimidate me into living a life that didn’t always feel real or authentic to who I am, fundamentally? It isn’t just a matter of me not agreeing with some of my old beliefs; I look back now and feel absolutely silly for viewpoints I once held so strongly to. How could I have ever come to some of those conclusions? But I also realize that so many of those beliefs took root because in the area of spirituality and religion, I hadn’t been taught well how to think. I was unintentionally taught how to blindly believe, read sacred texts super-literally, and accept being shut down when I asked the hard questions. It wasn’t until I reached the academia of religion through college, where I was taught about exegesis, hermeneutics, use of biblical languages, thinking about cross-cultural contexts, etc, that I began to build a toolbox of new paradigms and ways of thinking about how life and God might work. I also had to go out into the world and experience more to gain understanding with different eyes and a different mind. So, looking back, I couldn’t do better spirituality because I didn’t know better at the time, and I didn’t have the tools I needed to do better.

It seems to me that doing science is much the same as the way I described my growing up spiritually process. I really like Sagan’s words about science as a way of thinking. I think alot of the world misses this, especially in this day and age of arguing about fake news and how “my evidence is better than your evidence.” Aren’t we so good at proof texting scientific studies just as we are with Bible verses? Well, this one study says drinking red wine leads to a decrease in relative risk of heart disease, so that clearly means it’s OK to down a bottle every day. Or, this study shows that this number of people lost weight eating an ultra-low-carb diet, so clearly, we need to down the fat-bombs and consume bacon with every meal to achieve optimal health. Or, to be a little controversial here, The President has a “good feeling” about hydroxychloroquine and there are some preliminary studies describing its use in COVID patients, so let’s just start throwing it like gangbusters at everyone who has tested positive.

It’s my study versus your study, my scientific news source versus yours, tit for tat, back and forth. As though finding real truth is just a matter of learning a few facts and lobbing them at people, claiming we have figured out life.

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Going back to atomically-precise manufacturing guy. Yesterday, we talked for a bit about a piece that just came out in the New York Times, where a principal investigator for the federal government’s COVID clinical trials cautioned that employing experimental drugs too broadly and too quickly could cause more harm than help because we are treating emotion instead of doing good science. We need the well designed clinical studies and data gathered over time. My question to him, APM guy: is it morally OK to throw Hail-Marys at people at a time like this, or should we hold to the gold standards of research and wait until we have solid clinical evidence of safety and efficacy before we act? His opinion: sometimes you just need both. Sometimes you need to lob Hail Marys while maintaining the rigorous slower pace of good research at the same time…because at a time like this, people need answers and people need solutions.

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Is there a place for bad science? Is there a place for bad spirituality? Can those two things be part of the bigger picture of TRUTH?

I think sometimes about that quote attributed to Karl Marx….”religion is an opiate for the masses”, which is apparently more accurately translated: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people“.

I’ve heard people use this quote in a derogatory manner….like those of us who are drawn to religion and spirituality basically are looking for something to dope ourselves up with in order to avoid reality. I actually think that is incorrect, although I have to say I’m doing bad science with that statement because I’ve never actually done drugs or used any drugs like LSD or ayahuasca that are purported to offer spiritually enlightening experiences. But it makes me wonder…maybe bad science or bad religion have their place even if they aren’t perfect or always done well, because they encourage us to engage our imaginations, at least to an extent, and think beyond what we see right in front of us.

When I was in junior high, and then again in college, I was dreadfully depressed. There were so many times I just wanted to end my suffering, most of which I kept to myself. I wasn’t afraid of death, but at the time, because of my conservative Christian beliefs, I was terrified of the idea of having to get to heaven and stand before Jesus and tell him that I wussed out on him and on life. Looking back, I think my theology during those years was not so great, but bad as it was, it gave me something to hang on to when I couldn’t see any other great motivator to keep trying at life. That’s got to be worth something, right?

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I try really hard to remember that truth, in whatever form, can be subjective and slippery. I’ve had people try to convince me that they knew certain things to be absolutely true; I’m always very suspicious and skeptical when I hear those kinds of things. I personally believe the only thing that I know to be absolutely true is that love exists. However, I’m also aware that that could be my own subjective reality, and I don’t really want people to believe it just because I said it and that I believe it.

There are so many things that have seemed completely true at one time or another, and then we figured out that we were sometimes dead wrong. The world feels flat from the vantage point of the earth’s surface, but we know that it is in fact, a big round ball of rock moving in an elliptical orbit around the Sun. We also used to take time for granted and assumed that it was a constant in life. Well, apparently not. In physicist Carlo Rovelli’s words, time is “part of a complicated geometry woven together with the geometry of space”. Or what about absolute zero…where we used to think the temperature was so low that atoms would cease to move. But scientists have been able to reach negative Kelvin scale temperatures in the lab thanks to quantum physics.

My whole point here is that truth about anything can be hard to put our finger on. Even if like, in classical physics, things seem true on a certain scale, that truth might not always translate to a different scale…like how the rules for physics seem to change on the quantum level. We should probably all remain sobered and respectful of this in our pursuit of truth and our compulsion to tell everyone else what we believe to be true.

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Back to scientific proselytizing. So many times we are trying to force people to take our word for it when we share scientific findings or theories. We insist about DNA and quarks and dark matter and all manner of other things and shame people who don’t automatically believe us or our textbooks or our data sets. But we as scientists can also get very annoyed at people who try to push religion on us, who are recounting their own personal spiritual experiences and pointing to references in sacred writings that we might not be convinced actually hold any weight.

We all seem to try to insist that others believe what we have seen and/or experienced, whether it is about science or spirituality. And we all get annoyed with each other sometimes when we are asked to accept things as true with blind faith…some of us will get annoyed when we are just told to trust that vaccines are safe because alot of scientists have said so, and alot of us will get annoyed when we are told we should just accept Jesus as a redemptive savior so we can go to heaven because alot of people believe we are otherwise damned to hell.

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OK, maybe besides love, one other thing that I believe is absolutely true is that we have to hold grace for each other, and we have to forgive each other. All of our individual pursuits to find truth are inevitably going to be on collision courses with each other. We have to recognize that for some people, pursuing truth is an art form, that needs to be felt out in subjective ways. Others are going to believe in their bones that truth is objective and can be unearthed through good, well-designed experimentation. And we have to be gentle with each other, and even amidst the frustrations that arise, honor that each person is on their own path and has the right the pursue truth in the way that feels authentic and correct to them. We are not entitled to get our own way by making everyone see and understand the world exactly as we do.

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A slight caveat to what I just said above…..we need to offer grace, but we need to also relentlessly pursue showing people and allowing ourselves to be shown, how to do good science and how to do good spirituality. Maybe not in a manipulative proselytizing way, but through encouragement and with each other’s best interests in mind.

Didn’t Maya Angelou say, “When you know better, do better”? In my mind, science is a way of thinking, and spirituality is a way of being. Both can be improved upon, albeit in different ways. Both require us to lay aside laziness and acceptance of the status quo without ever attempting to engage or ask good questions.

This is the important part of truth-seeking that gives us the space and maybe permission to be able to offer our ideas to others. Personally, I have no desire to take advice or criticism from people who have refused to wrestle with life, who have insisted on always playing it safe, who have avoided suffering and pain at every turn, who refuse to consider that they might be wrong. But the people who have survived really hard things and allowed their hearts to remain soft, open, and engaged with life….well, they can pontificate to me freely and I will be so much more likely to listen, even if I ultimately don’t come to the same conclusions as them. The people who refuse to gloss over the difficult questions, who work relentlessly to unearth the shadow parts of themselves, who strive to think critically, and yet are OK with not knowing all the answers to life…these are the people I want to learn from, because somehow I believe they might have the greatest grasp on absolute Truth, whatever that is.

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And a final thought: fear can never be the ground of being from which we seek truth. Maybe it is a necessary short term catalyst to get us moving, but it can never be the long-term motivation. I’m personally convinced, although I won’t insist on my correctness, that fear can never lead us all the way to Truth, either in science or in spirituality. This is because it always has us looking over our shoulders, staying guarded, reluctant to take this one risk or chance that might actually be the one step that is ultimately needed.

Nope, the art and science in the pursuit of truth are marked by bravery and courage that insist on moving forward even when the fear threatens to overwhelm us. Fear keeps us small, fear keeps us afraid of hell, fear keeps us from loving others well…fear keeps us from doing anything, everything to find what is real, genuine, authentic, and lasting.

This is why I don’t like proselytizing of any kind, whether it be of the scientific or religious variety. Invitations, free from manipulation and fear, are better. I think this is always true.