A Raft

[Disclaimer for Rachel, should she end up reading this: He's all yours, once I forget that I've read this book. And you're more than welcome to beat me down if I've read a moral into something that had no moral value at all. Just sayin'.]

I am in love with another captain of the guard.

Due to the wonderfulness that is fall break, my homework and required reading has gathered the most minute amount of dust possible as I spent my evenings, or what was left of my evenings after work took its toll, reading a book. Not to plug Terry Pratchett or anything, but I adore the Discworld and its characters, most of all Death, the anthropomorphic personification of, well, death, and Sam Vimes, captain of the Night Watch. I love Death for his weird humanity and I love Vimes just because. Maybe because I'm a sucker for a guy in uniform, maybe because he's a cynic or maybe just because he's adorable to me in a million ways I can't precisely explain. I love to dive into stuff like this, just escape from everything in a way that's more mentally stimulating than TV but a lot less mentally strenuous than the problem sets that I should probably be doing this very instant. And the Disc is quirky and amusing, but it's got a soul, somewhere in there, and morality and odd physics-y magic and superb characters. I listen to Vimes' optimistic cynicism and I smile and know that the lesson is hidden somewhere deep and if it had been said out loud, it would have been mocked. And so I love it.

But it's dangerous at the same time. Reading and made-up worlds are not safe grounds for my brain to live in. I could almost be there, running with the watch to the palace or climbing deeper into the depths of the Library with the Librarian. And it makes me think and that is a dangerous pastime as well. It's much safer to immerse myself in whatever subtlety is involved in whatever weird math I'm supposed to understand to finish my E&M homework than to let my mind swim unsupervised in the ocean that is creative, fantastic thought. I can't muse on the nature of humanity any more safely than I can spend hours imagining a castle far away surrounded by distant blue mountains and a clear river. My heart's much too invested in either topic and the brain goes astray when the heart takes the wheel.

Oh, but should it be that way? Should I have to limit my dreaming because eventually it'll take me places I don't want to go? I know it's like flying-- there's always that risk that you'll come crashing back down to the earth. But I'm not Icarus, I'm not dumb. I know my limits and I know when the wax will start to melt. At the same time, my limits are so low to the ground that I feel like it's not even worth the effort to take off at all. And then the familiar cycle of accusations come around again, mostly directed at the ceiling. Why would I even have the ability to think and to dream like this if I wasn't allowed to use it to its full potential? Why give me a mind that can think like this and visualize and imagine if that's the worst thing I can do? And believe me, it's not a good thing for me to be too romantic. It's much worse than having my head in the clouds. It's more like building ice cream castles in the air and then insisting that I be allowed to live in them. It's not safe. But building the castles is such a gift. Maybe I'm supposed to use it for something else? Oh, what else? What am I supposed to do with my life?

Man, two years ago I had it figured out. Four years of undergrad (and I could totally take this physics major on) and then a couple of years of grad school and doctorate work and then I'd have a PhD in astrophysics and I'd be doing research and life would be grand. It'd be hard, sure, but everything in life is hard, you just have to try harder and you'll win. Follow your dreams, people. You just have to be determined.

Can I just say that those are all lies? I mean, not the 'everything in life is hard' bit, I'm sure that's good across the board, but you can't do whatever you want. Or maybe you can do what you want, but you definitely can't do what you thought you wanted. And so here I sit, a couple of classes away from a degree that I honestly have no intention of using but was so sure was right for me and I have no clue what I'm going to do with my life. I've had this awkward and uncomfortable conversation with a lot of people recently because I keep on meeting new people and everyone wants to know what your major is and the most natural response to physics, after a sympathetic groan, is 'What are you going to do with that?' Me, I'm going to frame it up as exhibit A for proof of the stubbornness of my pride and then move on. But to what? There's so much you can do through the church. It's not all being a pastor or a chaplain, there's tons of options out there. See, when God calls you, He doesn't send down a nice little post-it with a profession and a list of goals and He doesn't defend Himself or try to convince you to come, He just says Follow Me. I mean, what are you supposed to say to that? 'No, I can't speak well.' 'But I am just a child.' 'You can't mean me, Lord.' 'But how do I know it's really You? How do I know that this isn't some cosmic joke or twist of fate or weird chemical imbalance that causes me to think that there's really a higher power out there that gives an expletive about what I'm doing? How do I know?'

I mean, it's almost painful, talking about this call stuff. I guess I invite it, because I tell people I'm going to Dallas, but I don't explain why and of course they ask and then I have to explain that it's a conference for young people interested in ministry in the United Methodist church and that's met with a much different response than physics is. There's the 'Oh, that's wonderful!' or the judging silence where people reevaluate me and decide if they really want to be around me anymore or the surprise. That's my favorite, the surprise. I guess I look and sound like a God-hater because I'm a thinker. And it legitimately breaks my heart when I have to tell a little kid who came to a planetarium show and asks me how the planets were created that they were formed out of a protoplanetary disk when the Sun was very young because it can rock your little world when you find out that the universe didn't pop into existence fully formed, but I can't lie. You can't sit back and say we don't know when we do and say it's God when we can see a cause. I don't like the god of the gaps. That's not who I plan on serving. Now, I know that in the Planck time at the beginning of the universe, the laws of physics that we have right now can't explain what's going on, but I'm not going to say that that's God because one day people might get it, God might let us in on a couple of things and we'd understand how awesome He is by what He's made, but that doesn't mean that God is the answer to the question today. And He's bigger than our science, you know? Happy International Year of Astronomy- it's the 400th anniversary of the first time that Galileo turned his telescope to the sky and started to see things that caused a verifiable uproar. But the thing is, he needn't have. Caused an uproar, I mean. If God's existence is called into question by a couple of rocks orbiting a bunch of gas super far away, maybe He's too small. And maybe we'll forever have to be rethinking Him because I don't think we can understand Him. I mean, He's not a superhuman, He's not some mirror for us to reflect the best parts of us onto. He's God. He's holy. He's set apart. He is apart. I know that, for a fact. But if He's loving and He made us all to be loving, where did we go so very wrong?

But that wasn't the original point. The original point was Sam Vimes. Sam Vimes, who claims the city for his own and attempts to impose some order on the chaos and tries wonderfully hard at being a hero despite his insistence that he's not hero material. And maybe he's not, you know, maybe he's just a literary vessel for the idea that whenever the common good man tries to save the day chance and a little messed up dragon must come and save it for him. But he has such faith in good, such idealism that is protected by the cynicism, that you can't help but hope that he's right at the end of the day, that the good in people and in the world will really float on the sea of evil and not be consumed.

And I like that.