How Flashes Deep Within the Atom Reflect the Life We're Hungry For

I've been mulling it over -- this line I saw recently and can't remember where. 

Mulling it over while dragging sprinkler hoses across hot grass lawns, while driving kids to appointments and swim lessons, and every time I curl up beside family and friends while stretching summer long. Iced coffee cubes crash against condensed glass, dripping summer's heat across bare legs. 

"How we spend our days is how we spend our lives." 

And the audacity of it lingers in my brain this week. In moments and days that crash by, dripping lost to the ground, this claim that we can choose, can order, can decide to step fully into each moment and to control how we live our lives is brash, bold. 

Photo credit: Flickr user Robert Couse-Baker, Creative Commons cc license

I love it, and the science of atoms flashes to my mind. In a textbook years ago, I read about the wild, intricate behaviors of protons, neutrons, and electrons within an atom. 

Inside the nucleus is a flurry of activity where protons and neutrons exchange tiny particles called pions in a frenzy of energy. Electromagnetically, like charges repel each other. Protons, as positively-charged aspects of the atom, should repel each other, like same-sided magnets do. Yet, mysteriously, they don't. 

Bewildered scientists wondered for years why the protons' positive charges didn't repel each other and explode. They knew there must be a strong force holding everything together, but didn't know what. Experiments and observations hinted at the existence of this strong force, but not much was known until the 1930s and 40s, when scientists confirmed the existence and nature of this strong force, the strongest force in creation. 

Do you know what thrills me about this force? 

This strongest force in creation, this strong force that overrules normal magnetism and is stronger than gravity... this strong force in science reminds me of the Three-in-One God. Protons and neutrons are huddled so closely in the nucleus of the atom because they are giving of themselves. 

Taking part of themselves to manufacture pion particles, they give sacrificially to each other. Over and over they break off part of themselves and give to the other. In what reminds me of sacrificial love, there is a frenzy of breaking and making and giving and receiving, and breaking and making and receiving. Pions flash as gifts that last for a brief instant, then are gone. 

Giving of themselves to each other, they are wrapped intricately close. This -- the strongest force in the world-- is woven so tightly that all other natural laws of magnetism, poles, and gravity are broken, and in the center of the atom, unseen by the world, protons and neutrons give of themselves and hand off themselves as endlessly-given gifts to each other. And it's the strongest force in science. 

Want to live the life you're hungry for? This strong force, this endless breaking and making and giving... 

Who knew it was modeled in pions deep within atoms? 

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(Adapted from an archived post of mine.) 

When Prayer Looks Like Soup

Sitting beside my squirrelly seven year old, I helped him sound out long-vowel words and watched the clock, the seconds flying past. At eight-thirty in the morning, I was at the kitchen sink, swirling yesterday's coffee grounds out of the French press and into my compost bucket. Time spun and circled down the garbage disposal with the last of the fine coffee crumbs afterwards.

Photo Credit: Flikr User Frinthy, Creative Commons cc license

At nine, I called, leaving a message for her, stammering and saying in soft words that I was thinking about her and praying. The line rang long before the machine picked up. Ominous words had hung in the air all weekend, and this morning's appointment would bring answers.

Prayer looked like silent vigil at the sink, poured and slurped freshly-made coffee at the table, and wrangling in a first grader's attention again and again.

"Okay, with the long vowel o, what comes at the end of this word?" I'm waiting for him to draw a silent e, this quiet letter at the end of all his words today. The silent vowel sits quietly at the termination of each noun, directing, changing the sounds, and creating new words from the shy short vowel words who hem and haw and twist toes bare-naked in words surrounded by consonants.

Daniel draws graphite pencil down and around, and I sip more coffee, trying to trace out patience across my life too.

I check email throughout the morning and afternoon, awaiting word and praying for her and her family. Medical diagnoses can change so much, huh?

My parents due in an hour, I slip outside, down the deck steps, to a raised garden bed in the backyard. Surrounded by gaunt bony tomato plants from last year, shriveled and awaiting tomorrow's garden clean-out, I kneel next to the three surprises this spring. Three kale plants survived a Midwestern winter and curl purple leaves to the sky. I slice scissors across emerald and violet stems and then retrieve the fallen leaves from sandy soil.

Upstairs I submerge the vivid kale leaves in a chipped blue porcelain pot and run cold water high. Brown russet potatoes feel dense, earthy in my hands. I wash, rub them, and slide my green-handled knife deep into them. Drawing long the blade, lifting, slicing, repeating, I trace lines across them and into the white plastic cutting board.

Resting in God's presence and speaking out my love for him looks like this today, I've decided.  Trusting in his ability to bring beauty from crumbling soil, from gouged purple life, and from gashed earthy spheres, I rip apart raw Italian sausage, and pour in newly-chopped onions.

The aroma of browning sausage and onions seeps fragrant into me. Shaking out dried oregano, I watch the green flecks speckle into the jumbled meat and onions. Red pepper flakes tumble crimson. Stirring with my brown wooden spoon, I swirl silent praise and prayer, inhaling deep into this Pneuma Holy Spirit who describes himself like Breath.

I pour out the water that had immersed the kale. Droplets radiate light and life off purple-green stems and curling leaves.

I still don't know what news my friend has received, and I whisper her name to our God. Silent prayer and praising rises like steam from my simmering soup, an incense of sausage, kale and potato soup rising up before our Artist God, who is Enough. 


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Of Oil Swirls and the Painter's Canvases

Remnants of Korean Steak Wraps spread sesame oil and soy sauce in brown swirls beside romaine lettuce leaves on two plates still on the table. Minced garlic and ginger hang fragrant in the air.

Photo: Megan Myers, Creative Commons cc license

My husband's voice slips out from seven year old Daniel's bedroom, reading a bedtime story aloud. Daniel sniffs and coughs, reaching for his handkerchief, a re-purposed cloth napkin.

"Mom, what makes colds go away fast?" he asked wearily a few minutes ago. 

"Sleep, buddy. Lots of sleep. Let's have you go to bed early, okay?"

He's brushing his teeth now, and a sentence from my daughter's AP Drawing class has been running through my mind this evening.

"Create an entrance to the picture for the eyes to travel to the subject," states her Art Principles handout. "The eye should travel in a circuit from the subject to the secondary subjects before leaving the painting. Do not place an obstacle in the picture which prevents the eye from going beyond it." 

And it's funny to have an art concept speak wisdom into my life, but I can sense a deeper truth from it in relation to my walk with God. This concept that I want the observer's eye to scroll right to the subject is something that reverberates truth in me. I desire for people glancing in my life to find their eyes directed to the beauty of Jesus. 

So, Morgan's art principle is on repeat in my brain, and I find myself reviewing all aspects of my life. In my attitudes, am I pointing viewers to the beauty and transformative power of my God? In my stories and the words that I choose to describe my life, my marriage, my family, and my sin struggles, am I pointing to God's restorative grace and his unstoppable love?

Just like a painter or a sculptor chooses what to paint, where to highlight, and what to bring the eye to, I choose how I perceive and receive my world and attitudes. This color-swirled, majestic canvas of our lives is a gift and masterpiece still being finished by the Master Artist. I desire to have each curving Van Gogh-like flourish draw the eyes to our Artist God.

It reminds me of a verse I've been thinking about this week from my Bible reading in 2 Corinthians chapter 6. Paul is writing a letter to some believers and he says, "We put no stumbling block in anyone's path so that our ministry will not be discredited."

It reminds me of the art principle about placing no obstacle in the picture which prevents the eye from moving on. Then Paul racks up a seventeen-item list about all the ways he and his co-workers are striving to make right choices, but he ends with this thought: "We have spoken freely to you and opened wide our hearts to you."

And I think this is the way we draw the viewer's eyes to the Subject each time. We speak freely, striving honestly to have clean hands but admitting when we've stumbled, and we point always to the beautiful work of the Artist God in us. He gets all the credit. 

And we open wide our hearts to you. Thank you, friend, for this online or email friendship, for this pointing to the Artist God together. I appreciate you and would love to get to know you more.

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What You Have That We Don't

It's not that I was ignoring him.

Photo: Anne Ostsee, Creative Commons, cc license

I looked up as he said my name, and I smiled and nodded.

"Mom? See the sunrise? Look." My six year old Daniel pointed out the dining room deck window.

"Yeah, I see it! So pretty, huh?" I grinned and looked back down at my notes. Violet and coral stained a navy blue morning sky, outlining naked spring trees against the horizon.

"No, Mom. LOOK! See?" and Daniel tapped my arm, pointing again out through the glass door to the sunrise he could see from the far end of the table.

From two chairs away, I glanced again outside, and nodded at him. "Yep, I see it. It's pretty."

Suddenly, I understood. He wanted me to come see the sunrise from his perspective. Moving three feet down the table, I stood beside him, and peered out at the morning sky. And the contrast was striking! 

Sharp tangerines and purples sliced open the sky in vivid, brilliant color. From this angle, the sunrise wasn't demure or quiet, but a raucous riot of hues. Oranges, purples, magentas, and pinks shot from behind our neighbor's garage roof, streaking up the sky.

Daniel was right. The view from his side of the dining room table was extraordinary, and I had almost missed it.

Photo Credit: Set Apart Conference twitter feed

This last weekend, eight hundred-or-so women came together for the thirty-third annual Set Apart Conference, hosted by the University of Northwestern-St. Paul. For two days, we spent time together in worship, time together learning from keynote speakers Kelly Minter and Alecia Williamson Garcia, and learning from workshops speakers, (where I was honored to speak too). What I encountered again and again reminds me of Daniel's sunrises...

We all have vantage points to see God at work in our lives, and the views can be spectacular. We are missing out on the fullest picture, though, until we take the time to step into another's angle of sight. Seeing their stories of God at work, hearing your tales of God artistically weaving life events, opens us up to vivid displays.

Your job? My job? To speak out our stories, describing the beauty of God at work from our vantage point, and then to walk around the tables to learn from each other, to see what majesty He has splashed across your angles of the sky too. He is an always-painting Artist-God after all.

What Captain America and Superman Knew But We're Still Learning

Right after a tall red-faced Star Wars Darth Maul glowered down at me and growled, I jumped, and you would have too, to see his teeth bared at such close range.

Photo Credit: The Conmunity, Creative Commons, cc license

In a crowded comic book convention this weekend, my daughter and I passed countless Supermen, Captain America's, Doctor Who characters, and Star Trek klingons. Children and grownups sported long red capes, strode confidently in calf-high boots, and twirled plastic battle axes while shopping for comic book paraphernalia.

While I flipped over books to check printing companies and asked authors about their publishing journeys, my daughter was the real reason we were here. With a shy confidence, she turned pages in artists' portfolios, asking them questions on art techniques and leaping at the chance to show them her own sketches.

"I brought them with," she replied quickly when an anime artist suggested she show her work to people in the industry. "Can I show you?" Pulling off her blue backpack, she pulled out a manilla folder with her favorite sketches inside. She stood silent as two different artists flipped carefully through her work, pausing at some pieces to comment and linger.

For hours afterward, she skipped excitedly from the feedback they gave and from the intoxication of being surrounded by artists who love to draw and capture art in pens, pencil, and paints.

"I need to stop and draw," she declared at one point partway through the conference. "This just inspires me, and I need to draw." We scrounged up two chairs at the back of a loud panel room where contestants in costumes waited for their turn at the microphone. Morgan balanced her art pad on her lap, already tracing orbs onto the page, early starts of human anatomy.

And you have this too. It may not be with pencils and Japanese anime forms, but there is something you do that brings you such joy that you hunger for it. Siphon you away from it for long enough and it compels you to scavenge a place and a time to dive in.

What is it that calls to you? What hobby, talent, skill, or passion rumbles quietly underneath as you work your jobs, make supper, and drive from errand to errand? What do you look forward to today and this week?

Beware, my friend, because the television will call, and the tiredness seeps in, and it is always too easy to mutter slowly, "I'll do it tomorrow."

Don't put it off. Don't listen to the excuses, to the tired voice lulling you to easy comforts. Start now. Warm up your favorite drink, pull up your chair, and begin.

Because most likely, that thing that calls you, excites you, and is lingering silently there beneath the surface is something amazing, given to you by the Master Artist himself. Don't put it off, don't sink into the couch with another rerun episode. Pull out the paints, or the sketch pad, or your dremel tools. Click on that latest article or book piece you've started, and begin. It hums in you, pulling you.

And we are eager to see it. Even better, your Artist God is watching, smiling, and flipping through your portfolio.

(Linking with Ann in thanks. For those from Living Faith Church, stopping by for the immediate gratification post, please find that here. Thanks. All are welcome!)

How Flashes Deep With an Atom Reflect the Life We're Searching For

"Oh, I forgot to tell you! As I was driving to come get you just now, John, something fell off the car."

Both kids looked at me in surprise.

"Fell off the car?"

"Yes, I felt something tumble off the bottom of the car and, looking back in my rearview mirror, I saw something roll away."

The kids laughed, exclaimed, and followed me to the door. John was already looking for his flipflops.

"Do you want to go find the part for me?" I asked, grinning at him, describing the spot just up the road where I had turned onto the highway. He grunted happily at finding his sandals in the jumble of winter boots and shoes, and opened the door. 

"Here's where it fell off from," he stated proudly as soon as we were outside, peering under the back of the car. Where the muffler should have been was a gap, leading from an open pipe. John sauntered off comfortably in the blue twilight, my laughter following him.

In my daughter's ninth grade science book this week we have been reading about the wild intricate behaviors of proton, neutrons, and electrons within an atom. Inside the nucleus is a flurry of activity where protons and neutrons exchange tiny particles called pions in a frenzy of energy. Electromagnetically, like charges repel each other. Protons, as positively-charged aspects of the atom, should repel each other, like same-sided magnets do. Yet, mysteriously, they don't.

Bewildered scientists wondered for years why the protons' positive charges didn't repel each other and explode. They knew there must be a strong force holding everything together, but didn't know what it was. Experiments and observations hinted at the existence of this strong force, but not much was known of it until the 1930s and 40s. Eventually scientists confirmed the existence and nature of this strong force, the strongest force in creation.

And my daughter and I at the couch are reading the textbook, underlining key parts, and giggling about this knowledge, as we try to illustrate and act it out. And do you know what thrills me about this force?

This strongest force in all creation, this strong force that overrules normal magnetism and is stronger than gravity... this strong force in science reminds me of the Trinity. Protons and neutrons are huddled so closely in the nucleus of the atom because they are giving of themselves. Taking part of themselves to manufacture pion particles, they give sacrificially to each other. Over and over they break off part of themselves, and give to the other. In what reminds me of sacrificial love, there is a frenzy of breaking and making and giving and receiving, and breaking and making and giving and receiving. Pions flash as gifts that last for a brief instant then are gone.

Giving of themselves to each other, they are wrapped intricately close. This-- the strongest force in creation-- is woven so tightly that all other natural laws of magnetism, poles, and gravity are broken, and in the center of the atom, unseen by the world, protons and neutrons give of themselves and hand off themselves as endlessly-given gifts to each other. And it's the strongest force in science.

We get glimpses of that other-focused giving, in our families and friendships at times. I grin as my son strides back in the house, depositing an angular muffler on our front step, and it reminds me of this endless giving we see in this science, and in our God.

I see it in you as you love and care for the people in your lives. I see it in moms, dads, grandparents, siblings, relatives, friends and neighbors. This strong force. This breaking and making and giving...

Who knew it was modeled in pions buried deep within the atoms?


(Photo Credit: Mufflers: Michael Ash, Creative Commons,cc license.
Photo Credit: Atom: Argonne National Lab, Creative Commons, cc license.)


Linking with Emily at Imperfect Prose.

How God Made a Daughter

 She waylays him with a hug.

"Dad, when do you have to leave tonight?"

At the news that worship practice had been called off, she dances excitedly beside him, jumping, squealing and persuading him with her smiles. "Want to watch a show with me?"

He grins, groans, and affectionately agrees.

Minutes later, they are at the couch, typing in the coordinates for an online Japanese animated film, and waiting for the movie to buffer.

"Want to make me some food?" he jokes, expecting a glass of milk.

"Sure, some noodles?" she offers.

"Wow, really?" My husband is thrilled, and we make eye contact and laugh.

The home-made beef lo mein she has learned to make is a new hit at our house, and we eat it several times a week now, it seems. Tucked away in my corner at the computer desk, I sip orange zinger tea, watch the snow fall, and join them in this relaxed evening at home.

Snow falls quickly, cascading into grey twilight to stack all night to a depth of eight to twelve inches, forecasters say. For now, though, patches of spring grass stand resolute under the onslaught, and a plate of beef lo mein has just arrived.

I watch my husband and our teen daughter laugh, talk, and scoop noodles, companionably, and I see it in her. The way she carries herself, how she throws back her head and laughs freely, and in her peaceful calm as she curls legs up onto the couch, settling in for the movie. This is a girl who knows she is loved. With the pure safe love of a dad, a mom, and her God, this woman-child is loved and treasured.

And the beauty of it falls glorious.

And we are broken, and human, and flawed parents, but somehow, somewhere, God brought beauty anyway, and it humbles and thrills me.

She's yours, God. You did it, and you only. Thank you. And I offer it to you as praise, and am honored to love other teens in my care too.


(And linking quietly to Emily at Imperfect Prose too...)

Of Grimy Hands and Potter's Wheels

Photo Credit

Slippery hands grasp hard. Rosy earthen clay spins, turning on the potter wheel.

"Look at how resistant the clay is to being centered," she says, standing on tip toe and leaning hard into, onto, the clay. Silvery hair tucks into a short bob, with stray curls hanging wispy at the neck. Dark navy blue pants press against a wobbly table, while a turquoise long-sleeved shirt is rolled high on the arms.

"You cannot make a decent vessel until the clay is centered," she states, breathing slightly with the exertion of aiming the spinning clay towards center. "I'm always using water. I never put my hands on the clay without using water."

"The speed is very important." Her right foot holds pedal firm.With a steady, sure hand, she opens up the clay then, pinching, shaping, molding. "The clay has to submit to the potter or it won't make a piece. I'm at the mercy of the clay, if it behaves or not sometimes."

"The anticipation that the potter has as she does the arduous work of digging up the clay (in ancient days), working it with strong hands, and envisioning what she has planned for it... The artist has a design already." Pink lips smile under sparkling azure eyes.

"The artist knows the limitation of the clay," she mused, leaning over her clay, gently molding, pushing, fingering. "If a piece is too soft, it will collapse." She slices off a lip of pink clay, dipping the tendril into water, grabbing more clay, and practising surgery to meld it on thicker and more sturdily to the vase's mouth.

We watch as Judith holds steady, experienced hands against the pliable clay, spinning and smoothing it, shaping and molding it. Pink edges rise higher, curving out sensuously into a delicate vase neck.

Suddenly, Judith halts and picks up a sharp surgical-looking scalpel. "Often air bubbles arrive in the clay. The bubbles aren't visible, aren't noticeable to the eye, but the master potter can feel them under his hands as he molds and handles the clay. To ignore the bubbles and leave them intact, allowing the piece to be kiln-fired would be disastrous. The item would shatter in the extreme heat, and be destroyed."

With firm precision, our potter gashes the sharp knife into soft clay where she had noted the abnormality. "It must be caught and fixed now."

Quoting Blackaby from his work "Experiencing God," she said, "When you come to know God by experience, you will be convinced of his love. When you are convinced of his love, you can believe him and trust him."

Wiping grimy hands on a muddy towel, she pauses and shares with trembling hands of her husband's new journey into Parkinson's and a recent blinding in one eye. "We have been learning to trust in new ways now," she laughs, moving again to touch the clay.

"But you see, I love clay so much. And any artist who loves the clay can't keep her hands off it, always grabbing it, molding it, shaping it, seeing the beauty that she already imagines for it."

Pausing, she grabs a knife to prick an unseen bubble, then the wheel whirls again, as pink clay spins beneath smooth, strong hands.


(Potter: Judith Storkamp from Northwestern College's Set Apart Conference March 8, 9, 2013 along with keynotes Ann Voskamp, Liz Curtis Higgs, and many more workshops presenters.) 


Linking with Ann at A Holy Experience, I thank God for lessons in clay and humble red-handed women. 

 

A Coffee Break With the Stars

Courtesy of HubbleSite

Photo Link

It's not fresh, this rain puddle-y mug of coffee. But I'm feeling frugal and tired, so I slide last night's forgotten zucchini out of the microwave and slip in this mug to reheat old coffee. It's acrid from too much time on the hot burner and slightly stale, but I'm craving a jolt of caffeine.

In between hours at work, and time at home watching a Ronald Regan documentary or bent over metric conversion tables, I pull my Bible close, craving time with Him. I ponder words from the oldest New Testament letter (this letter from Jesus' half brother James to his Jerusalem church and beyond).

"Don't be deceived, my brothers," he says. 

I pause again now, the coffee too stale for me to finish. Ugh. I shudder, and pour myself some orange juice. Tangy sweetness washes away acrid staleness.

"Don't be deceived, my brothers," James says, tying this thought in with the sentences above. "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

Refreshing words rinse staleness from my mind. The Father of heavenly lights. Hubble space images of spiraling galaxies, twisting green nebulas, and hulking red stars  fill my mind.

"Lord of the Star-fields, Ancient of Days, Universe-maker, here's a song in your praise," croons Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn in my memory.

Father of heavenly lights, dropping every good and perfect gift from above. He Who Does Not Change Like Shifting Shadows.

"Lord of the Star-fields, 
Ancient of Days, 
Universe-maker, 
here's a song in your praise."

The Father of heavenly lights rinses staleness from me.

Linking with Imperfect Prose and A Holy Experience. 

This Weekend

What was your weekend like? What grabbed your heart, your eyes, your attention? Where did you see God's beauty today? Post below, if you'd like.