DEATH, PARTICLE PHYSICS AND OTHER IMAGININGS ON MY PATIO

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

(last  of three parts )
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In parts one  and  two, the author, after contemplating the 'Eden' of his backyard and strangely being compelled to think deeper than ever about the death of his beloved wife of 33 years, asks: What happened to the atoms and molecules of which his wife's body was composed? In a somewhat  metaphysical manner, he speculates on how God orchestrates  the mico-universe of sub-atomic particles that, in every
moment,  surround him and everyone else. He now seeks resolution in earthly  rather than heavenly terms. 

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I felt  close to that resolution I ached for, but  my neurons were shutting down . This perturbed  me, for I knew that if  I ever wanted to return  to this  private and  turbulent event, my mind  would not behave the same.  Like a nervous ostrich,  I reached for the  morning newspaper to bury my head , but no sooner was I  holding  up page one  when more questions hounded me.  Were  any of these invisible worlds swarming around me, were they possibly  working their biochemical dynamic into my body and , if so, were they  influencing my thoughts—even slightly?  And what about those particles in my yard being released second to second from the short  life cycles of leaves, flowers, and insect worlds?  What impact were  these bundles of unremitting  nano-energy having on me-- on all of humankind for that matter?
There had been a day when I roamed a science building at the University of Wisconsin and bumped into a biochemistry instructor about to enter his lab.  I impulsively put those questions to him.  He said he didn't think our constant exposure to all those  atoms and molecules--in a normal setting – had any effect on us because "we're used to it."  He was inside his lab before I could tell him I wasn't satisfied.

I began to  understand why some scientists find prolonged  mystery intolerable. Rain or shine, they are compelled, like an infant grabbing for his missing security blanket, to come up with a theory to explain a  mystery.  Could it be that the scientists’ quest for empirical truth is an antidote for the anxiety they feel about living out life—as most humans have to—with lots of ambiguity  and finite intelligence? Perhaps though, courage is required for the research scientist who must keep working with the knowledge that he or she is  daily surrounded by invisible worlds over which he has very little control. When cosmologists  conceived  of "parallel universes",  were they perhaps giving their theory of  what Christ had in mind when He told the Scribes [Mark l2:34] : "You are not far from the kingdom of God "?

I found myself wishing that everyone believed that problems are to be solved and mysteries lived.  Sister Jean-Marie Howe, OCSO, a retired abbess,  once reminded scientists that "mysteries, by their very nature, are beyond our willful grasp [and] in a way, they impoverish us, eluding, as they do, our desire to control and possess."  She added that,  once we distinguish between a problem and a mystery,  "we have more latitude to let  go and be patient, humble, trusting, and open to awe."

Once more a cardinal chirped . It reminded me of some  Biblical wisdom: God knows when each sparrow falls to the ground. Would it not then follow that He must have a lively hand in the fate of  those invisible building blocks of  life? Were not  some  Native Americans believing this when they laid their dead high up, fully exposed to the open sky, believing that their loved one's body to be  literally returned to life of some kind ?

Affirming and comforting words echoed from Dr. Robert W. Weise, professor of pastoral ministry and the life sciences at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis: "What is so amazing—and mysterious—is that God will put our molecular bodies back together again when we are raised from the dead."

We had  been talking  about a law of physics that postulates that matter can not be utterly destroyed.  He told me  that scientists have proven that subatomic particles decay by releasing energy and turning into one or more other particles.  As we conversed in his office, I thought  that  if, indeed, molecules liberated by decomposition do "re-group" to form something else, my mother's life-long belief in reincarnation and other New Age spin-off   beliefs (she also prayed to Jesus) can be, unfortunately,  quite  convincing to the non-Christian. I thanked  Dr. Weise, author of several articles in the field of zoology, clinical pathology, and bio ethics, for his  patient tolerance of my  questions, and left St. Louis that day concluding that the human faculty of reason is dangerously limited  without the component of a spiritual faith.

A  glance down at my digital  camera  on the patio table, with its hundreds of functions , reminded me  how much I liked to be in control of just about everything which daily confronts me. If things don’t go my way,  I am prone to frowns, pouts, and assorted moods. But in self-defense,  I argued back with a soliloquized sermon:  I really do know that it’s always better to trust God’s way rather than mine; it’s just that I’m short-suited in steadfast trust, and I  too often avoid the  discomfort—or pain—of " decreasing so He can increase." Surely the prophet Isaiah would agree—wouldn't he?-- that to make God laugh, just tell him what your plans are. Didn't this prophet, more than 2,700 years ago, look up at the stars one night and praise God  thus: "He calls them all by name; because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one of them is missing." [Isaiah 40:26]

Might not  Isaiah today be as equally amazed and reverent--perhaps even scratch his head—with  God's handiwork of the subatomic world?

Only  a stubborn hope that a climax to this backyard event was at hand  prevented me from escaping  into  the house . There I would quickly find relief from my  feverish brain  by attacking the chore list which  my wife  Mary Alice  had waiting for me   or working on the   slide programs  I presented to nursing  and retirement homes.

Absent-mindedly I  walked to the butterfly garden and stared at the soil for several minutes.  I began to process a simplistic layman’s  conclusion—one which I’m sure my seven-year-old grandchild could reach if bribed with pizza—I  had reached some time ago about what really makes the earth’s current 112 chemical elements different from one another. From  some research for an article I was writing, I had  learned something astonishingly simple about  what determines the physical appearance and composition of anything. This difference, I learned,  depends solely on the way electrons are grouped or positioned around an atom's nucleus; it’s not the  atom’s material composition nor any process of  physical change that determines what element, what final “product”  these  particular atoms will produce. But  rather, creation of the element and which of the ll2 it will become is determined  exclusively and simply by the configuration of these atoms around the nucleus. Creation  of matter, organic or inorganic, one might then deduce, comes from practically nothing—unless it be whatever energy or  force affixes  a particular number of  electrons—different in number for each of the ll2 elements—to a  spinning around their  nucleus. In other words, was it not possible that  reality itself—everything  we touch and feel in our world—has been created out of “nothing”  by a pre-ordained and pre-Big Bang design? This configurating  force within the atom, I had excitedly—perhaps excessively—concluded could only originate with an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Creator.

I now  had to believe that God  very likely created just one building block for everything in this universe and that He is that building block or creation itself. He did  name Himself  in front of Moses, "I AM."  Recalling that the Holy Grail for physicists today is a uniform theory that would explain how our universe works with the four fundamental forces of nature—the strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity—I became audacious with another wish: that  physicists  poke around with an equation  even more straightforward than E = mc2 . Let them try: G = R —God Equals Reality.

I leaned against the garden fence. Mary Alice called out, wondering what I had been  doing for so long. But where, oh where, was that resolution to Judith's death?   I said a brief prayer, then lifted my head and peered out at a milkweed plant, its pods covered with silky white stuff and its leaves notched from caterpillar nibbling.  I felt I had asked the Lord too many questions, expecting  Him to answer me out of a whirlwind. I  certainly would not want Him now to dare me, as He did Job, to explain how He, God, made the morning stars "sing together".

Then came what I sought: at last a strong sense of comforting, earthy  intimacy with Judith’s  death. I remembered that soon after we were married,  she and I had reluctantly toured a memorialized Nazi concentration camp in Belgium. There we learned  that when the Allied troops liberated it, they found on several barrack walls the figures of butterflies which the condemned  Jews had scratched out. We were told that the butterfly represented “liberation “ to the prisoners.

And with that memory, I now thought of that caterpillar which had feasted on the milkweed a few feet from me and how, in a few weeks, it would enter into its  temporary chrysalis grave. Out of that chrysalis, if  I were attentive, I would see emerge a  creature which,  though only a few days ago was wormy and squishy, would now be unbelievably transformed  into a beautiful, liberated creature. Within an hour this creature, despite its frailty and absence of any aeronautical design , would take flight to its final  home, a thousand or more miles away in Mexico. Not only would I hold this healing analogy forever in my heart,  but now I had something  of lasting value to share with those nursing home folks.

In Deuteronomy 32:4, Moses said it all: "His work is perfect .”

© 2010  Robert R. Schwarz
rrschwarz7@comcast.net