Dark Space

by | Jul 26, 2011 | 1 comment

E=mc2

I know there is something here in this equation.  Not just scientifically, but philosophically and spiritually.  The conservation of energy.  Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.  I know there’s something here having to do with death and even love, but I’m no physicist.

While away, I read an article about the how the human genome project is possibly making the existence of Adam and Eve, one man and one woman, impossible.  That based on the human genetic code, when homo sapiens appeared, they appeared together- about 1500 of them.  Francis Collins, who headed up the project, is also a believer.  Some say this disappearance of Adam will do away with Christianity all together.  Tim Keller said that it would discount the writings of Paul because much of what is in the NT is covenantal- through one man, sin entered the world- through another- salvation, that kind of thing.  I have no thesis of my own- just found it confusing and a bit disabling.

And then I watched a National Geographic documentary the other night called “The Moment of Death.” I kind of felt I shouldn’t be watching that – especially later when they detailed each manner of death, starting with drowning- complete with descriptions and little stick figures acting out the effects.  But I did, and found it also confusing.  When is the moment of death?  When someone is brain dead but their heart is beating because we have them on a ventilator, are they dead?  If there was a God and an afterlife, at what point would the spirit depart?  I also found it interesting that just a few centuries ago, or maybe a couple, people had no real way of being sure a person was dead so they set up living mortuaries where people who were presumed dead would have a limb tied to a bell incase they should wake up.  It was a person’s greatest fear that they might die and be buried alive.  In 1907, a surgeon named Duncan MacDougall placed dying bodies on giant scales and weighed them before and immediately following death. Apparently, the soul has a weight- 3/4 of an ounce.

I am still fascinated and comforted by the infinite and therefore eternal by my standards, universe and have done a bit more reading on this.  Apparently there are a few theories on the shape of the universe and whether or not it has a limit.  It may be spherical and closed in time.  It may be flat, infinite and expanding forever, with no boundaries.  Or it may be open with a negative curvature and also infinite.  I’m regurgitating most of this because I’m no astronomer, but I just don’t think we think about the universe enough or where it came from.  Forget about our planet or all the planets, what about the dark space that came before the birth of stars and planets?  Where did dark space come from, I want to know.

All of the above just to say, there’s a whole lot of gray, inexplicable, and uneven aspects to life and death and for anyone to claim to know anything for sure seems downright silly.  This is all very tricky.

In other news, I’m tired of trying to force the continuity of two lives that feel totally separate except for the pain connecting them.  Instead, sometimes I wish to pretend, as I place my clean glasses, the ones we registered for,  back on the shelves, that these are actually different glasses than the ones we received for our wedding, though they appear the same.  The plates too, the ones we agreed on with the reddish rim (because I was in my red phase and our apartment had to have shades of red and green just like I’d noticed were the colors throughout the film Amelie), are different plates, though they appear just like those.

JAC

July 26, 2011

1 Comment

  1. Anne D

    For now we see as through a glass, darkly….

    Peace, Julia.

    Reply

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