My wife’s final words to me as she left

“You remind me of umm, Mandy Patinkin, the guy from The Princess Bride who keeps saying ‘you killed my father.’”

Faith and Science

We had a vibrant, forthright discussion on the book of Genesis, the creation of this world, and the relationship of religion and science. We go at things head on.

Here is one thing I have not done, do not do, and have no plans to begin doing: lying to our children. Of course we choose, curate, focus, and crop the types of conversations we have, out of necessity. But when it comes to the Bible, to Science, to Faith and Reason and all these things going back to the dawn of time, I will not lie. And the lie for me to tell would be this:

It all makes sense.

That would be the lie. When they ask questions, we continue asking and investigating and exploring further. Sometimes I have good answers to some topics in some areas, but the better the question, the more likely it is the answer will lead to more questions.

I am a person of faith and belief, and I am a person of reason and logic. For some, these are irreconcilable. For me, it is difficult, but it makes the most sense: Science helps us understand a great deal, and always, always, there is just a little beyond what we know. It is that little tiny bit of unanswered mystery - that might, and probably is much greater than tiny - that helps my faith survive. My faith is damaged, which is what questioning does. But it survives, and it survives because I have tried to be honest with myself, and honest with our children about exploring these questions and ideas together. We are not doing so from the framework of ‘it’s all possible.’ We have chosen to explore this from a family garden plot built on Judeo-Christian soil. This places us in the majority of American statistics as they relate to religion. We are not a minority, we are not persecuted, we are not martyrs, and we soundly reject the nationalist, hateful, dishonest megaphone lies that infect a great deal of American evangelicalism. We have a love for a guy named Jesus and the message he brought a couple thousand years ago. A message of hope, salvation, love, acceptance, and rejection of power. Full stop.

So yes, we talked about Genesis, the beginnings of the world, and the different ways religion and science explain the past.

In a nutshell…

How does Genesis, the creation of the world and how it relates or might relate to science. Are they related? Is Genesis meant to be literal? What does ‘the inerrancy of the Bible’ mean? Is there a way took at both the Bible and Science for clarity, knowledge and wisdom about the world and our place in it?
Perhaps ‘clarity’ was the wrong word. When you learn more, do you really get more clarity? Or do you keep finding better questions to ask? Maybe that.
These are the conversations we engage with. I am not afraid of conversation, of learning, of knowledge, and of finding a place within for faith and reason.

Arguments, functions, multiplying mixed numbers

I had a huge argument over whether or not trolls are real. It was a wonderful disagreement, though I am loathe to acknowledge it to the individual involved directly.

Also, there were folks solving functions and and multiplying mixed numbers.

It’s hard to believe certain things in mathematics are real. Yet they are.

So where does that put us in terms of trolls and unicorns?

Recording

A 15-year old attempted to record dialog for a project without her little brothers being little brothers. That is to say, some level of background noise reduction is required in order to effectively record dialog. If you don’t believe me, ask Jeremy Long.

Through some combination of science and miracle, she ascended through this aural obstacle and got the clean audio she needed.

Nap planning with 2-year olds

I’m setting the timer for five minutes, I said. And then we’ll do nap.

I do nap now?
he said, running over.

You wanna do nap now? I asked, scooping him up.

Yeah, he said. I get blanket?

Yeah, I said. Let’s get a blanket.

So we got a blanket. And I held him. And he fell asleep.

But I held him extra long before lying his messy blond head down.

Short story : Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge

The thing that strikes me, after re-reading with the Olders, is the extraordinary descriptions of life’s beauty, told in four different ways of perception:

Observation
Interpretation
Memory
Imagination

A man stands on a bridge over a creek, about to be hanged for an act of espionage during wartime. He soaks up everything around.

Powerful still.

This story has hung with me ever since I first experienced it in high school many years ago.

I think a fundamental idea of education that I’m drawn to is the notion of doorways, of gateways, of introductions to ideas or knowledge or art you wouldn’t otherwise experience.

A recurring idea I’ve told our kids is that they will likely forget a great deal - most - of what we learn about. Or rather, they think they’ve forgotten, at some point. But something, once introduced, is lodged in there, in some way. Some things will stick, most things will not. But much of what we experience and learn about and talk about together will be in there, in some way, perhaps dormant, latent, vibrating, waiting to be awoken, perhaps providing the backdrop or platform or foundation or root system to surge forth at some later point.

Crime story

Oh my goodness!
he exclaimed,
Norwegian prisons look amazing! They’re actually sort of luxurious! They kind of make me want to go to prison for a little while!

Well,
his younger five-year old brother reminded him,
then you’d just be trapped.

I know,
the 11-year old continued,
but they have TVs, and if it was just for a little while.

Well,
his younger bro continued,
then you couldn’t go to the library.

Oh yeah,
the Elder said,
I mean, I definitely wouldn’t want to go to a U.S. prison.

Oh no,
I groaned,
it feels like this conversation is exactly the type that a hard-right politician would grab onto.