God Plays "Hide and Seek" For Us

I love when there’s a synchronicity to what I read, such that disparate sources point to a single truth. 

Chemist Dave Collum said on a podcast that one time he was having a conversation with a high level government guy, former NSA, who mentioned a lot of “they did this” or “they wanted that”. And Collum said, “who is ‘they’?” He wanted names on things on some of the mysterious tyrannies of our time. And the NSA guy said, “as soon as I tell you a name, it’ll shut down thinking. You think, ‘oh Bill Gates did this’ and then thinking dies”. It’s no longer interesting or worthy of further exploration. Collum implied a lot of it is just groupthink that is un-orchestrated but runs in the elite circles. 

Collum said that has really stuck with him, that when you define something too well it shuts down thinking. What if the same is true with God? If he’s not mysterious, would we be as interested? 

I was reflecting also on an interesting piece by Steve Sailor in Taki magazine that talks about how the human mind craves 50/50 propositions. NFL betting is so popular, he says, because it’s such a razor close call with the point spreads, including all the micro bets that they’ve been able to determine are very close to 50/50. He quotes a physicist who wonders if God purposely made the universe so puzzling in order for us to be interested in it, to be fascinated by it, to wonder at it in all senses of the word.

I thought of that in connection with the Shroud of Turin and how it seems to show the moment of Resurrection. Is it a bit of a letdown to see this as proof? Does scientific proof take the trust and faith out and make things somehow less captivating? Does it make things too pat and shuts down thinking?

Faith in Jesus has seemed in some ways a 50/50 proposition (even if maybe only 20% of our population are strong believers). There is, on the one hand, plentiful evidence in favor of faith, beginning with the gospel testimony, the way the apostles willingly died to attest to its truth, and myriads of experiences nowadays, in terms of “Godincidents” to outright healing miracles. But there are also evidences against faith given how God cannot be touched and felt in a material way (except under the disguise of Communion), how much evil exists, and how death has not been overcome. 

A meditation I read today talks about how God plays “hide and seek”. There's the third chapter of Song of Songs. The parables in the gospels likewise illustrate this: some will get it, some will not, meaning it encouraging further thought. In John's gospel Jesus says, “you’ll see me awhile, then you won’t, and then you’ll see me again”. And there is Mary Magdalene and others who see the risen Christ but don’t recognize him until he prompts them to.  This strikes me as the best proof of all that “hiding and seeking” is advantageous to us.  Human psychology must have that need. 

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Another human need is the need for stories - which the gospels provide in spades.

There's a new book out that's "an invitation to allow the oldest stories—and the Greatest Story—to reshape our own.” From a review: 

"There’s an old Irish belief that if you aren’t wrapped in a cloak of story you will be unprepared for what the world will hurl at you. You remain adolescent at just the moment a culture worth its salt requires you to become a real, grown, human being.

In Liturgies of the Wild, acclaimed mythographer, storyteller and Christian thinker Martin Shaw argues that we live in a myth-impoverished age and that such poverty has left us vulnerable to stories that may not wish us well.” 

Food Truck Triplog

They say it’s not the heat but the humidity but sometimes it’s both. Today was both and whoa even a heat-lover like me took an hour break. But after walking/jogging 5.3 miles it felt warranted. 

We had just gone to the Columbus Food Truck Festival at the Franklin County fairgrounds and stumbled around in the heat, picking food from the first truck we saw (practically). This is the closest thing to our city’s “Taste of Columbus” it would seem. Unfortunately there were almost no samples so it would’ve cost a fortune to try all 40+ shops. Not quite “Taste of Cincinnati” alas. 

I joked to my wife that you know you’re old when you’re excited about going to a food festival. When I was a kid I’d be like, “There’s McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, who needs anything else?” 

I went with “The Pressed Olive” which specializes in “Mediterranean wraps and comfort food” according to their website. I had a “French taco”, a wrap stuffed with three meats (chicken, pork and brisket) as well as gouda cheese & fries.  My wife picked a Cincy bbq joint a few yards away and chose ribs and collard greens. (I used to think as a kid it was “colored greens” because I thought only black people ate them.) 

Needless to say there were a lot of trucks that “got away”, as in they got away without my money. I chose Frida’s Mexican for a chicken burrito but felt some regret for missing out on Big Pappy’s BBQ and the luscious-looking smoothies at another truck.  Smoothies, by the way, are one of the few good things that the young have now that we lacked. We had nothing but Icee’s. 

I used to have no money and all appetite. Now I have money but not enough appetite. Such is life!


Brave Old World

One of the purest joys of my childhood was also an unmitigated disaster. I never wanted anything more than that chemistry set when I was 7 years old, probably because I liked picturing myself in cerebral jobs like a writer, geologist, or absent-minded professor. Maybe the latter because of the influence of Jerry Lewis in his hit “The Nutty Professor”. Wikipedia reports that you can be so engrossed in your study that you can neglect things like, oh, maybe a paper route? Sounded good to me. It could also be an excuse to be subpar in other areas, like athletics:

"The absent-minded professor is a stock character of popular fiction, usually portrayed as a talented academic whose academic brilliance is accompanied by below-par functioning in other areas, leading to forgetfulness and mistakes.

One explanation of this is that highly talented individuals often have unevenly distributed capabilities, being brilliant in their field of choice but below average on other measures of ability. Alternatively, they are considered to be so engrossed in their field of study that they forget their surroundings."

Maybe I’m overthinking it. I was also intensely curious in what things looked like under a microscope. It was a way to see what is invisible and what could possibly be cooler than that? Who wouldn’t want to see God if they could?

I worked long into the morning of Christmas Day and came down with an allergic reaction necessitating a hospital visit. So the mini-disaster.  That was the first and last day I got to use my chemistry set. My potential career as a scientist ended abruptly. 

But what makes me think of this is how they would never market a chem set to kids nowadays for threat of lawsuit. In fact, if the statute of limitations wasn’t up I could probably sue now and afford that vacation home in Hilton Head...hmmm....

We lived in a braver time, a seatbelt-less world of courage and fortitude free from the iron grip of lawyers. When I think of Ohio during the '60s and ‘70s I think of the unofficial motto of Miami University: "To think that in such a place, I led such a life”.... And lived to tell about it.