DEATH, PARTICLE PHYSICS AND OTHER IMAGININGS ON MY PATIO

This guest blog is contributed by journalist Robert R. Schwarz (excerpted from his book-length manuscript, Tiger Behind Me, River Ahead, © 2010 )

( second  of three parts )

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In part one, the author, while contemplating the 'Eden' of his backyard, was strangely compelled to think deeper than ever about the death of his beloved wife of 33 years.

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In that crematorium , I believe there had been profound phenomenon  unfolding around me as I prayed.  Atoms attract other atoms with  tremendous force; so, what did Judith's  "ex-atoms" eventually become after  they were liberated from her decaying body and then  coalesced to make up molecules which, in turn, eventually became the building blocks of those organic things I touch  every day ?  I neither  could nor would  assert, as some scholars have, that the outcome of  the disintegration and eventual integration of Judith’s atoms was left up to chance.   Neither could I  entertain the  untenable belief in soul transmigration or reincarnation.

I knew that many particle physicists  live seriously with the truth that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-present were awed  by His orchestration of our entire visible world and even  more amazed at His  design of  the  equally complex and infinite, invisible world.

I walked the grass, plucked a white clover and put the stem in my mouth. My head throbbed from this probing . Aware of how  undisciplined and chimeric  my thinking was, I was tempted to junk it all and go watch something funny on television.  The temptation  persisted for an hour or so, becoming stronger each time I resisted it;  the probing demanded resolution, a nugget to be found.

I continued:  If God can manage our  unbelievably complex, invisible world, then the full scope of His sovereignty over our visible world is obviously beyond human thought or a  poet's metaphor. To  appease   the scientists'  perennial curiosity and to allow  skeptics to "see" His sovereignty,  I surmised  that God helped out with  the development of higher mathematics, telescopes, and microscopes.

I  tried to envision God's invisible particle world now surrounding me .  Here I was,  anchored inside and out to  a micro-universe of billions of molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and so forth.  And within each of these molecules was another, even more active universe of atoms !  As a journalist, I had  learned from research interviews with scientists  that within each of these atoms is a separate, whirling world of electrons, protons, neutrons, mesons, quarks,  gluons—and whatever other  ons are waiting for discovery.  Also in this yard,    streaming by my nose at 186,000 miles per second , were all sorts of  electromagnetic waves,  from radios, the sun and other cosmic bodies.  With  a gamma ray measuring one-billionth of a meter and an atom 1/25,400,000 of an inch, I smiled at the thought of being able to move worlds  with a mere sneeze.

Closing my eyes , I recalled that  gravedigger’s  spade  patting down  earth  over Lois Nelson, a farmer's wife who died of an aneurism at age 45. Her father-in-law, Carl, had asked me to include her funeral  in the slide documentary I had been developing about  an American farm family in Mt. Morris, Illinois. Lois, who had worked more than 20 years helping developmentally disabled adults, had just  been eulogized in a small countryside church , only yards away, by a fellow staff member who said Lois showed him and others "how to love."  A long procession of farm families filed out from the l50-year-old  church while a woman, under  a bright blue sky, played "Amazing Grace" on Scottish bagpipes. Carl turned to me and  said : "She gave the best harvest ever.  Did you know, Bob, she was an organ donor?"    I was one of the last to leave the gravesite, a simple mound of earth in the midst of  acres and acres of cornfields.  That day I wondered how  this corpse—what once was , molecularly  speaking,  Lois—would eventually feed the earth around it and what part of it might drift off to become alive again in nature.

Confused , weary, and frustrated with my ignorance, I  returned to my patio table and began contemplating the infinite number of  molecules  pulsating within  the various yard odors wafting by me.  And what about those uncountable, invisible elements of the sound  waves now striking me  from that overhead jet from nearby O’Hare and from the staccato  chirps of  one  of those tree-top  cardinals and from my neighbor's calls  to her playing child? I posited that no mathematician's chalk nor computer hacker's skills could   ever  calculate the total of  those invisible particles which surrounded me ; nor could anyone  even  guess at what pattern, if any,  they formed. Yes,  I would have paid good money to see all this stuff sketched out and colored- coded on a large mural.

I would have been more grateful to understand — just some, mind you –  how God orchestrates all of this,  how this Master Creator delegates the function of  every speck  to the operating laws of nature. Atoms  bond and coalesce with each other to become molecules, then  living cells.  This miraculous  dynamic begged  me to ask:  Could it be that the irrepressible power which draws these universal particles together and then transforms them into a community of matter  is also the power of love  which, for example, likely  bonds  families tighter than atoms. The source of this power, I believed, was not a Star Wars "force"  but that of a dynamically alive and personal God.

Dare anyone explain away our universe with theories of Randomness or Chaos?  Later in life , I was to read these still timely thoughts of  research biophysicist Paul Davies from his God and the New Physics , [New York: Simon & Schuster, l983, l44-45] :  "…We are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions, of number, weight, and measure in the make of all things…  That the universe is ordered seems self-evident. Everywhere we look, from the far-flung galaxies to the deepest recesses of the atom, we encounter regularity and intricate organization.  We do not observe matter or energy to be distributed chaotically.  They are arranged instead in a hierarchy of structure:  atoms and molecules, crystals, living things, planetary systems, star clusters, and so on.  Moreover, the behavior of physical systems is not haphazard, but lawful and systematic. “

[ to be concluded tomorrow ]
© 2010  Robert R. Schwarz
rrschwarz7@comcast.net