Destination: Palm Motel

Stephanie and I drove to Santa Monica this morning for a medical appointment. Afterward, we saw my nephew Brooks and his girlfriend, Hana. Brooks and Hana are participating in a missions project with Campus Crusade. Ground zero for their summer in Santa Monica is the Palm Motel. I called it Palm Hotel, but Brooks corrected me. At first sight, it's definitely a motel, affectionately known as the Palm Resort by the summer residents. It was, I'm sure, a very exciting vacation destination in the 1950s. Brooks gave us a tour of the six-per room-accommodations. Oh, college days. We wanted to get lunch at Chipotle down on the Esplanade, but in 20 minutes of searching could not locate a parking space. We settled instead for Arby's. Steph ordered a salad; Brooks and I had roast beef laid thick onto buns, plus curly fries. We finished up in time to pick up Hana from her class at Santa Monica College and drive them both back to the glorious Palm. The time was brief, but still a pleasure. For the summer we are separated by 50 miles or so of the 405--not fun to drive, but worth every slow-and-go minute to see those we love.

Good Tines

When possible life paths appear, the usual rule is that we cannot tell where each will lead. The jungle of contingency is just too thick. Predicting the future is hard; it's equally hard to say what would have been. The latter is the what philosophers call the counterfactual--the course events would have taken if a single fact or choice had been different. These are two different uncertainties: One looks ahead to choice points and consequences; the other looks back and wonders what might have happened. I believe that physicists take seriously the possibility of multiple universes in which chance events split reality into different versions. I could be wrong: Maybe this is just a piece of urban mythology that any competent physicist would be quick to repudiate. It makes for good science fiction, though, and it at least resonates with common human experience. We can hardly help wonder, "What if?" Our finite knowledge means we cannot know. But the One who is omniscient knows perfectly. Unlike Fozzie Bear, who knew which way to turn, we often don't know what to do when we come to a fork in the road. That's okay, with divine guidance we can be confident of good tines ahead.

Fire in the Sky

We enjoy fireworks only on rare occasion, usually July 4, just as the night sky edges from dark blue to black. The first launch opens a show of light magic that is not to be missed. Over many centuries, starting in China, pyrotechnicians have built launch tubes to propel incendiary shells thousand of feet into the air. When the shell explodes, the embedded clusters ignite, emanating a spectrum of vibrant colors determined by their chemical composition. Shells vary in structure, producing different light patterns; firing patterns on the ground vary, too. The design choices allow for a light show that has real composition elements, like a symphony. It's risky, too: fireworks are designed to explode. And perhaps its the pairing of violent destruction ("disaster" means exploding star) with brief and beautiful fire that makes pyrotechnics unique among all inventions. Fireworks are not utilitarian, but they are wondrous--a treat for the human species. Every year, I'm glad to have witnessed--and participated in--another display of light spectacular.

Beautiful Freedom

It's fitting today to meditate on the remarkable conditions in America, and in many nations around the world, that permit freedom. Democracy, privacy, and free speech are amazing achievements, as are the establishment of institutions and infrastructures that widely offer education and opportunity. Early civilizations found ways for the great masses of humanity to thrive; only a couple of a centuries ago, nations learned how to create the special conditions where freedom became possible. Many nations have found a version of the formula, though dictatorships and repressive regimes continue to crush democracy in some unhappy places. I'm grateful to live in the United States. Tensions between the political left and right sometimes play up as critically important, but their amicable polarity is what generates the conditions for liberty. Through debate we fine tune our model: To what extent is wealth owned or shared? Should values be individual or collective? Ought character defects to be suffered or remediated? The political polemics roll on. They may sometimes be ugly--but their product, freedom, is beautiful.

Glorious Saturday

Some Saturdays are wonderful. Those are the stay-at-home days in which the calendar square is totally blank. The day is wide open, but that does not mean we kick back--not at all. I have things to do--a short mental list, in fact--but no item on that list has a time certain. This makes for a mental outlook that is free-form, almost recreational. Without a timetable, meals can be more creative in preparation and more leisurely in consumption. Good times. Today will be productive in conventional terms, I'm sure. For example: the plumber is due any minute to replace a 25-year-old water heater. With the right attitude, even that upgrade of infrastructure can feel like home improvement (oh boy, a new water heater!). Exercise is on the list, too. Steph has a brand new bike helmet, which she claims is her first ever, and plans to cycle around town. I intend to go to the gym this afternoon. All in good time. This day, glorious Saturday that it is, will unfold according its own tempo. At the day's end, I feel confident that we will climb into bed feeling good about what was accomplished--and feeling especially good about how it all played out.

I'm Worried

In the Scriptures, we are told not to worry. That's a therapeutic enjoinder if there ever was one. Anxiety, whether low-grade or raging, is corrosive. I suppose worry can have its positive effects, like helping us to focus when the stakes are high. When operating a chain saw, for example, it might help to imagine, briefly, the cost of an error. Most of anxiety, though, is yucky--a bona fide sector of human misery that we should, if we could, toss into an incinerator. I don't think of myself as a worrier, but I do feel a bit of it now. In part, I know what it's about, but not 100%. Some anxiety, I think, is a correlate of physiology--maybe I ate too many fresh strawberries or drank too much coffee (though great volumes of coffee feel pretty normal to me). Though I worry a little today, I'm glad for the Biblical advice--no, the command--not to do so. How wonderful, how needed, is the greeting and wish of "shalom." The hippies got one thing right, at least. Peace, everyone.

Unearthly Love

Over the last few years, the subject of God's love has been recurring both in our small group studies and in my reading. Henri Nouwen's interpretation of Rembrandt's Prodigal Son shines light on the subject, as does Brennan Manning's teaching that Christian growth requires shedding false images of the Father. God is love, we know, but we are mistaken to think that His love is explained by earthly examples. It is, instead, an utterly strange love, one that builds on human metaphors but by necessity warps them to forms that are utterly mind bending. In the parable of the workers in the field, some work all day and some for just a few hours, but all get paid the same. This is no domestic calculus; it's too odd. Though we ask why the farmer pays alike (or, equivalently, wildly different hourly wages) in the end the rationale is beyond our comprehension. The same conclusion applies to the parable of the prodigal son. The father loves his renegade son lavishly with a robe, a ring, and a fatted calf. Can we honestly imagine a human father responding in this manner? No--the love of God is inscrutable beyond quantum mechanics. It's way past the limits of cerebral cortex.