Friday, March 17, 2023
In bed at 10:30, awake at 4:20, up at 4:40, unable to sleep, muddled thoughts of a teen suicide, Jesus disappearing from him at a distance, Tom's eulogy, Hartmann's crime, PTSD. 32℉ start to a windy day, current wind 21 mph WNW, gusts today up to 39 mph, wind chill at 19℉, ranging from 0 to 38 today with a high temperature of 39℉, Can hear the wind blowing outside. Sunrise at 7:00, sunset at 7:00, 11+59.
Dusky sunrise. I opened the Venetian blinds at 7 to check the sunrise and see if any birds were visiting the feeders. Heavy overcast, strong wind, getting a bit brighter outside but no sign of the sun. By 7:10 or so, goldfinches were gathering on the niger feeder which I have to refill this morning with the gallon jug of seed I bought at Wild Birds Unlimited late yesterday, my first outing in a week. The manager and I both remarked on how we are seeing hints of color changes on the goldfinch plumage. I'm wondering if there are crocuses or snowdrops blooming on our lot or nearby. Snow still covers much of the ground but there is also a lot of green showing. Freezing cold and windy today and tomorrow, but Spring-y temps arrive next week, not warm, but warming.
Science, religion, poetry, and mystery. I have long thought that religion, theology, God, and scripture can only be apprehended, if at all, in the same way we apprehend poetry, with a sense of Mystery underlying all of it, not Fantasy, but Mystery. I am reminded of this thought in reading Marilynne Robinson's essay in the 12/22/22 issue of NYRB "A Theology of the Present Moment." She addresses the ultimate question - why is there something rather than nothing. And she acknowledges "Space, time, light, gravity—all of these elude understanding, radically and profoundly." I joked about the Mystery of 'creation ex nihilo' when I created this Slogthrop Imponderables and Incommensurables 15 years ago as a repository of the then-many comments I posted to WaPo news stories during the George W. Bush administration using the pseudonym P. Bosley Slogthrop: "Boz has been a permanent resident of Bosky Dells Home for Broken-Down Old Lawyers since he became deranged pondering what he calls the “Slogthopian Conundrum,” i.e., that nothing must be something. Boz began losing sleep after hearing Billy Preston sing “Nuthin’ from nuthin’ leaves nuthin’ . . . You gotta have somethin’ to be with me . . .” He started perseverating ‘nuthin’ from nuthin, nuthin’ from nuthin’’. His fevered brain reasoned “You can’t take away nothing, for there would be nothing to take away! Ergo, nothing must really be SOMETHING! But if nothing = something, must it not follow that SOMETHING = NOTHING???” Night after night, day after day, for weeks on end, old Boz pondered the paradox – nothing is something, something is nothing – until at last he was led bleary-eyed and blathering from his local Taco Bell to be committed to Bosky Dells where he spends his bleary days and restless nights posting comments to stories in the Washington Post and wherever else he can squeeze a comment. The old duffer's schizophrenia is sometimes under control but rarely so when he writes." Boz's name was created as a corruption of "[Tyrone] Slothrop," from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. 'Sloth' was changed to 'Slog' in reference to a controversial memo written by SecDef Donald Rumsfeld in which he wrote: 'It is pretty clear that the coalition can win in Afghanistan and Iraq in one way or another, but it will be a long, hard slog.'' 'P. Bosley' started out as 'Percy Bysshe' after you-know-who and I changed 'Bysshe' to 'Bosley' after Tom Bosley who played Richie's father in the Happy Days sitcom of yore, ending up with the ridiculously pompous P. Bosley Slogthrop.
But back to Marilynne Robinson's essay in which she bravely works to relate God and quantum physics. I have struggled to do what she does, i.e., to have some minimal comprehension of God and of subatomic physics. She undoubtedly succeeds more than I have. I struggle with her essay ex necessitate, as when she writes: "I will mention one more thing that is known and proven, just another observable phenomenon from the point of view of younger physicists, already put to work in industry: quantum entanglement. If a photon is split in two, a change in either half will occur simultaneously in the other half at any distance—across the universe, in theory. I know that other particles can be entangled. I have no idea what this means. Basically, however, in its nonlocal expression, change can occur in physical objects, the entangled halves of a photon, unmediated by space or time—that is, as if there were no space or time. What are we to make of that? Dr. Johnson’s rationalist boot struck the irrefragable stone, which flew a distance proportionate to the angle of the blow, the weight of the stone, and the force expended. Textbook causality. It has worked so well. But it seems that reality has other options. Space and time are now being thought about as the effects of entanglement. This is all too complex and counterintuitive for me to attempt to enlarge on, heaven knows." She goes on, but my mind is boggled by all of this. What exactly is a photon? What is matter? What is mass? What is energy? What is spacetime? What is space? What is time? What is God? I can only repeat what I wrote to start this piece: "I have long thought that religion, theology, God, and scripture can only be apprehended, if at all, in the same way we apprehend poetry, with a sense of Mystery underlying all of it, not Fantasy, but Mystery."
Fateful Anniversary. Twenty years ago tonight, Geri and I were in Santa Rosa, California, in beautiful Sonoma County wine country. We were there for my long interview for the position of communications director for the Diocese of Santa Rosa. The diocese was scandal-plagued and for a number of reasons I withdrew my application for the job. What I am remembering today however is not the long interviewing, but rather sitting in an eatery with Geri watching George W. Bush deliver his fateful address to the nation about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, "WMD", and giving Saddam Hussain and his two sons 48 hours to leave Iraq. "Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing." We all know what followed, our hubristic "shock and awe" bombardment and invasion, discovery of no 'weapons of mass destruction,' our long and controversial occupation, and the Middle East in seemingly permanent turmoil, with Muslim refugees flooding Europe and elsewhere. A catastrophic tragedy, brought to the world by the 3 amigos, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. I remember listening to the speech and thinking we learned nothing in Vietnam. Now it's 20 years later and the Middle East is still a mess, with American influence diminishing and Chinese influence growing. The Taliban uterly defeated us in Afghanistan, Bashar al-Assad and the Russians prevailed over our interests in Syria. The Iranians are ever closer to developing their own 'WMD.' And even Israel is involved in an existential struggle internally with what passes for democracy on the line. Obama was largely quiescent when Russia seized and annexed Crimea, remembering the backlash to the Iraq fiasco (which played a significant role in getting him elected) and Donald Trump has turned the Republican Party into a predominantly anti-internationalist, anti-globalist party of near-isolationists who have more affection for Vladimir Putin than for Joe Biden. I believe that much of what has happened in the U.S. and in the world over the last 20 years was set in motion by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld policies underlying that stupid "you've got 48 hours to get out of town" speech 20 years ago tonight. How stupid and feckless we can be. Alas.
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