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An extraordinary thing

Love is the most extraordinary thing.  I can't get my head around it.  When I love someone, it depends on me, not on them (after all, "I love you" starts with "I"). It's me who has the love to do the loving with, not someone else who can somehow conjure it out of me.  What does this matter?  It means that I don't have to worry about whether someone 'deserves' love; I don't have to know everything about them, or even know them at all.  And it means, too, that there is no such thing as 'unloveable'.  But while love starts with what we have (where it comes from before we'll come to later on), and goes out from there, it changes things as it goes.  When someone is loved and begins to realise it, something inside them expands and grows, and begins to become 'loveable'.  They begin to fill their space, to be transformed from a shell, an idea of a person, into the real thing.  The order of things is important here.  We become more and more 'loveable' as we realise we are loved already.  Loveability is the result, not the cause.  You've come across this idea before, I'm sure - have you ever noticed that it's easier to find friends by being one, than by looking for them?  Have you ever wondered why smiling makes you happy?  An extraordinary thing!

There's a passage in the Bible that is quite well known, and talks about love:

Love is patient.  Love is kind.

It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Now that you've read that once, go through and read it again, but this time substitute your name for 'love', and he or she for 'it'.  "Keri is patient... etc"

Did that feel like lying?  Did it make you feel terrible inside?  Convicted?  Don't despair - the story doesn't end here!  In fact, we have to go back a step or two before we can finish it off properly.  We need to know where love comes from in the first place, because we can only love others because we have love in us to start with.  We only have love in us to start with because we are, ourselves, loved.   God loves us, and loved us first, so now we can love too.  I think that the most overlooked, misinterpreted, cliched-out-of-all-perspective three words ever are "God loves me", but more about that next time.  This time, instead of reading that passage with your name and feeling bad because you don't measure up, this time read it as a promise:  this is God's love that the verse is speaking about, but as we let ourselves grow into the space that his love creates around us, we'll have more of his kind of love to share too.  So, it becomes a promise, a hope for the future, an idea of what you - yes, little, fickle, silly old you - and I - yes, littler, fickler, sillier old me - can become.  Just a thought, K :-)

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Hope and angel wings

Once upon a time there was an angel so new she had no wings yet.  She was taken to the wing-fitting-room and shown there hundreds upon thousands of pairs of wings.  "Wings are what you need in order to fly," she was told.  So, she went along the rows looking for her wings.  Some were far too big, or far too small; she could see that straight away and didn't bother trying those ones on.  Others she did try on, but they weren't hers, and couldn't make her fly.  Some came pretty close to fitting, and it with these ones that she tried the hardest: running, jumping, leaping and flapping as hard as she could.  But it was no use, and she crashed down harder in those nearly-right wings than in any of the others.  She watched as her friends found their wings and soared above her.  "Come and join us!", they cried, "Flying is wonderful!".  But she couldn't, she had no wings to fly with.  In desperation, she cried out "It's too hard!  There are so many wings to try.  I don't know what the right pair looks like, I don't know what I'm looking for, how will I ever find my wings?"  She sat down.  "Perhaps it's better not to look anymore.  Perhaps I will give up now, then I'll never crash land again.  I'll never be hurt again."  She sat very still for a long time.  Eventually, she said to herself, "If I never put on another pair of wings, I will never crash, but neither will I fly.  Wings are like hopes - they are here to be tested.  Some will hurt us when they let us down, but the ones that are right are the difference between standing on the ground and flying through the sky.  So I will go on looking for my wings.  Just because there are ones out there that are wrong, does not mean that there are none that are right."

Happy flying :-), K.

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Pots

When we say that someone is full of themselves, it's usually a bad thing.  We are acknowledging that there is something better to be full of than what we are made from.  But 'full' is an interesting word.  If I had a bowl into which I put as many stones as would fit, I would call the bowl full of stones.  But then, I could pour water into it too; and though it would be more full (that is, there is more in it now, with water as well as stones) than before, it is neither full of stones, nor full of water.  For a vessel to be full of something, it implies that that's all there is there.  Full is exclusive. 

Imagine two bowls made from clay or pottery.  The first one is made in the traditional manner, with sides, a bottom, and a hollow in the middle, but the second is different.  The second bowl has sides and a bottom, but the hollow in the middle is not there - it is a bowl full of clay, a bowl full of itself.  Before this bowl can be used for anything, it must first be emptied; and in the case any kind of vessel, it is the emptiness that is (initially) more important than the fullness.  Emptiness means that it is available.  Emptiness must come first, before any kind of filling can happen.  Then, of course, the next most important thing is what it becomes filled with.  How much room there is for the good stuff depends on how much of the other stuff has been cleaned out. 

So if you are, like I was this morning, feeling empty and wondering why, think about this.  Emptiness means opportunity, because it means we are ready now to be filled with something new.  Emptiness means that the difficult process of hollowing out has, perhaps, already been done.  Emptiness should be treasured for this - don't let yourself shrink around what you have, don't become smaller just because at the moment you are empty.  No, be larger, be more open, be more available so that as much as possible can be poured into your life.  Then you will not just be full, but you will realise that the greater the emptiness before, the greater the space now filled with the new and good thing.  Just a thought, K.

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Conservation

Engineers like everything to be the same, conserved, constant.  Things like energy, mass, and momentum.  When things are not constant and change, we have to write an equation and it becomes more complicated and messy.  When things are not conserved we have to wonder where they've gone to, and start thinking about losses and efficiencies, which we don't like.  We like to take the finite amount we have and spent it as well as possible; minimising losses, and maximising output.  And so we come up with ways of keeping things as constant as possible in order to do so - we insulate our houses to keep heat in, we have reheat cycles in our powerstations to squeeze as much as possible from the fuel we put in.  We guard our resourses and stop them from changing.

God is not an engineer.  He does not deal in keeping things the same.  He does not have finite resourses as an input.  Let me give you an example to tell you what I mean.  A friend gave me a twig a month ago - just a twig off a tree, without leaves, but it did have a white tip where leaves would have grown.  I took it home, and, a couple of days later (oops!) put it into a glass of water.  Just because I could.  Now, it sits on my windowsill, with a whole host of leaves that are getting bigger each day.  The leaves that are growing on that twig did not come from last years ones that died, fell off, were kept, and are now somehow being stuck on again.  No, these leaves are new.  They came from the air and the sunlight and the water; they have never been before, they are new.  Now think about a tree in autumn.  To the tree, God says, Let the dead leaves fall; do not try and keep them, let them go. There are more where they came from.  To the leaves he says, Do not worry that I am finished with you.  I have something else, something different now; you will be changed into a new thing.  The key to this whole process is knowing that he has more where they came from.  God does not have a finite supply of life to spend; he has life in abundance, in infinite volumes, in eternal time, and limitless magnitude.  He doesn't have to worry about changes and constancy like engineers do, he can just spend and spend and spend and still have more where that came from.  The leaves on my little twig have come from nothing - they weren't leaves before, and now they are. 

Why does this matter?  (You never really thought that God was an engineer anyway.)  I want to encourage you to look for the things that are alive and growing, instead of finding something dead and trying to make it live again.  In the things you choose to be involved in, find those that are living, not only things that are 'good' (but might be dead).  Don't be scared of the small beginnings.  Don't worry that things you hope for don't yet exist - they can be made from nothing.  Don't be afraid to let go the dead things.  Don't be scared to 'waste' life, to see it change - if it is real life, then there's more where that came from.  Just a thought, :-) K

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Decisions and dinner

Imagine you are giving a dinner party, to which you've invited all your friends.  If they are anything like mine, they will ask if there's anything they can bring.  Sure, you say, and give them an item or two to bring along.  Eggs, cocoa, vinegar, mincemeat, cheese, coffee.  You know how they are going to fit together, and when they do, the result is good.  Lasagne, chocolate pudding, coffee for afters.  What is not good, though, is if these ingredients somehow go where they're not meant to - putting coffee in the lasagne or cheese in the pudding.  But you know how to combine them all, so you're sure it will work out (if you remember not to grill the pudding, but that's another story). 

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn when I moved to Canada, was this:  if it is true that (a) moving to Canada is the best thing to do, then (b) it will be best for me, myself, (c) it will be best for the people that I meet when I am there (so far so good), (c) it will be best for my church and friends that I leave them (not so nice now), and (d) that it will be best for my family that I am 12,000km away in a strange land.  Ouch.  It was hard to take because I was proud - I didn't like to think of the connotations of being 'removed', and what that said about me.  Now I realise that it wasn't really like that at all - eggs are good, but not everywhere, in everything, all the time.  And if something is right, it has implications on everything.  Right means right, right?  So, if you've ever had to make a strange kind of decision, think about the other side of it too.  Sometimes we don't know what the right implication of our decision will be on other people.  Sometimes we'd like to make our decisions based only on what we think the right outcome for them would be, from the little we get to see into their lives.  But we can't really do it that way.  If we are asked to bring vinegar, then it does no-one any good if we bring chocolate (and vice versa).  We have to hear what is right for us, and remember that we're not the one putting this great feast together.  After all, we are not really the centre of the universe.  (But, I hear you say, "Wherever I go, there I am", so I must be!  Sure, but personally I've never learned to like coffee in my lasagne.  There is a better way.)  Just a thought :-) K.

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Luminox

Hey everyone!  Some new photos from Luminox - one of the festivals to celebrate Oxford's first millenium - are up in the photo pages.

Globe

 It was a very friendly event - felt almost like new year or something, with people wandering around the streets looking at the fire sculptures (and trying to figure out how they all worked!).  Since then, it has snowed, hailed, rained and shone.  I ran 15 miles on Sunday, and just as I finished the 14th the hail came down.  Last time, I was ready to stop at that stage, but somehow being pelted with ice gave me extra motivation to get home asap, and overall I shaved 15 mins off my time!  I hope you are all well :-) K. 

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Deductions

People are so friendly these days.  I think it's something to do with the weather.  Brits are always very keen to talk about the weather, and now I think I know why.  Someone remarked the other day that the only good thing about global warming and the sea levels rising was that Cambridge would go under first.  Well, perhaps.  There are some signs that this might not be the case ... 

We all know that a black cat walking across your path is a sign of bad luck - I have had my doubts about that (after all, I quite like cats, and it seems a bit hard on the black ones) - I have now found a more certain corollary.  If ever a white swan should swim across your path, it is a sure sign that the path is flooded.  Trust me on this one!  And this is why so many people are friendly.  It's hard not to see the lighter side when you have people tying plastic bags around their shoes, putting on their boots, then trying to cycle through the flood - or indeed the range of gumboots that appear!  There was one couple in particular that made me smile - I didn't think they were a couple on this side of the river.  He offered her a piggyback ride across (it takes about 5 mins to walk through - it's a big flood!).  When they reached the other side, they were holding hands.  It seems that gallantry is not unappreciated!

Enough from me about the weather (actually, there've been bright spring mornings each day this week - someone else is getting the rain that floods us...) or you'll think I'm really becoming British ... ;-) K.

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Lunar eclipse

This was so cool! 

 Lunar eclipse

 

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Snowballs etc

Hey everyone

This month has been so busy I don't quite know where to start!  I've had some great days and some less than great days.  I got into trouble in college the other day.  It was on the second day of heavy snowfall (check out the pictures under the photos link), and a Friday so I was teaching my first years in the afternoon.  We were doing the atomic structures of metals, which gives them their properties.  These diagrams are notoriously difficult to visualise and understand properly in 2D, so I decided to take advantage of the copious amounts of moldable matter falling from the sky to try and visualise them in 3D instead and dragged my poor embarrassed students outside to make snow models.  So far so good - they got the hang of it well - until the head porter saw us, didn't recognise me, and thought we were naughty students making snowmen (which is strictly forbidden in the Old Quad), and got a bit upset...  When I went to try and find him later on to explain and apologise, he'd gone home.  I had to leave a note on one of those "While you were out" generic forms: "Dear Mr Important Person Head Porter Sir, Very sorry to have upset you earlier; we weren't making snowmen, but having a lesson in metallurgic atomic structure..."  Argh.  Anyway, I figured that it was a lesson the students were unlikely to forget (or me either!). 

In the spirit of trying to find things that they won't forget, I am endeavouring to make an engineering "Hall of Fame" - where I can use everyday objects to remind them of particular engineering theories and concepts.  So far, we have the infamous snowballs (though not strictly relevant to the final application!), buckling instabilities (flicking a coke can), brittle/ductile failure being unrelated to stiffness (the rubber band vs. chewing-gum thing), and perhaps penguin feet for the counterflow heat exchanger (if anyone knows where to get penguin feet from, please let me know ...! )  But there must be more!  So, my challenge to the engineers out there - tell me some of the lessons that stuck in your head, and why? 

That's all for now ... :-)  K

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Returning

I've been thinking again, some of it along the lines of the last post.  One of the things I most enjoy about living in Oxford is the walk to work through the fields and parks.  It's a great way to start (and end!) the day - relaxing, thoughtful, quiet.  But recently we've had floods, snow, wind and what with carrying folders of work for marking and study, I've been on the bus nearly every day in the last month.  Today was bright and sunny though, and I was up early, so I walked to work today.  Everything looks like winter.  The marshy meadow that was flooded has now got brown grass and piles of ice and mud through it, the trees are broken and bare, the paths are muddy and frozen; in short, it all looks barren.  But despite the appearances, there's a kind of newness and freshness about it all - an expectancy that says, "Look! It's coming back!  Life is coming again, life is coming back!  No matter what I look like now, life is coming again!"  That was the greatest impression of my whole walk - not the way things are now, but the certainty that the important thing - the green, vital, pure life - was on its way.  When you look at your world, remember that.  Life - real, true, Life is coming back.  Just a thought, K

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