July 29 Midweek

Still on Holiday...

Here we go. Another preloaded canned message! But hey holidays are important right? By this day I should be well over the at-home fake jet lag I whined about. We should be on our way through Alberta.

As I sit to write this, I have just finished delivering my presentation to the 14th annual international Whitehead Conference in Beijing China. Over the internet. I am experiencing my jet lag here at home. Ten hours is quite a shift of time. But it has been fascinating. When we encounter a very different culture it is a challenge. Perspectives become extremely important. Languages can be a huge barrier. At the same time a new language gives a very different way to understand. The Chinese languages are very different from European ones. The way verbs and nouns are managed is fundamentally different. Context is more influential on meaning in Chinese than it is in English. Machine translation struggles very hard to do this task.

I struggled hard to comprehend the technical language myself. Whitehead is notoriously difficult to navigate and when one adds the complication of translation to highly technical language…

But it is also fun.

Then again I am a nerd.

Easy is boring.

We have so many different ways of moving through the world! Isn’t it interesting how creative the universe is? New things constantly arise. The task of creation continues as God lures up beauty and intensity from the roiling chaos of untrammeled creativity, as it says in the beginning of the book of Genesis:

“In the beginning, when God began to create the universe, All was formless and void. Darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God brooded over the surface of the waters.”

In ancient Hebrew thought, those desert people saw the sea, the deep, as the source of all terror and disaster. From over the great sea came storms, flash floods, lightening and disaster. Also invaders, strangers bringing devastation. But from the same direction came the rains that made life possible.

This is my process theology reading of that passage. But it rings true to the ancient teachings of the rabbis too. Life is complicated. It is difficult and easy and beautiful and terrible and nobody can predict exactly what will become of us. But we can move forward with the glimmers and inklings of the possible into a foggy mist of adventure. It is exciting and sometimes terrifying.

It is and adventure.

I pray and hope your summer is an adventure that brings joyful surprises. I will have stories I am sure when we get back from wherever our 2002 Kodiak camper takes us. We have very loose plans and a general direction towards the Icefields Parkway. The highway, that goes between Banff and Jasper Alberta. We want to see the Columbia Icefields before they melt completely.

I will let you know if they are gone when we get back.

Until then, may your summer be blessed, be beautiful, and be and adventure of joy!