Here’s a photo of a young man struck by lightning.
His arm has been exquisitely branded with a Lichtenberg figure, the visible pattern left by an electrical discharge.
I’ve seen photos of Lichtenberg figures in the sand (fulgurites), formed when lighting strikes the ground and actually fuses the sand into tubes of glass in a characteristic branching fractal. There is even a theory that mountain ranges themselves were formed by some immense, cataclysmic electrical discharge. Here is a view from space of the Alps:
The other day, as it started to get warm, I saw the thick ice of the turtle pond start to give way, and the water below began to move and breathe again.
I saw that branching pattern again, dark on the grey ice, and I thought of nerves
and I thought of lungs. Here are two trees, breathing for the earth:
and here are human lungs:
Here is an iron-rich river estuary:
and here are blood vessels
When I was about six years old, I would lie in bed, falling asleep as I gazed at the dark green maple leaves pushing against my bedroom window screen. Each leaf was just the size of a hand—so many hands, all gesturing in the breeze, saying more things than I could keep track of. I remember gazing at my mother’s hands as she sewed a patch on a pair of corduroys. The veins on her hands—the veins on those leaves: the pattern was not lost on me. This is a world with something to say. My mother’s hand darted up and down so quickly that I was terrified of her needle, but I couldn’t get myself to back away. She never did make a mistake: the needle went where her hands wanted it to go, briskly mending until the cloth was whole again.
Here is the late Christopher Hitchens describing the era in his life when he began to doubt that Christianity held any truth about the world. He was in elementary school, he said, and his teacher told the class:
[Y]ou notice, boys, that God has made the vegetation and the trees and the grass very green, a lovely kind of green, which is the most restful colour to our eyes. And imagine instead if they were orange, or puce, or magenta or something. So that shows that God is good. And I remember thinking, ‘I know nothing about chlorophyll, photosynthesis, let alone natural selection.’ But I remember thinking, ‘that’s nonsense.’ That must be untrue. If either thing adapted to the other, it would have been our eyes to the vegetation, surely. And it’s one of those little proofs of a large thing ... Once you have a thought like that you essentially can’t unthink it.
By the grace of God, I was luckier than Hitchens: Once I saw the world as a body, I could not unsee it. It only remains to decipher the gesture of those thousands and thousands of green hands, with their mother veins. Here is what I have heard them tell so far:
Chlorophyll and photosynthesis and natural selection show that God is good. Science and beauty are cooperating systems that function in the same body, and they both tell us something I cannot unhear: something is happening here. This is not random. We have a goal. There is a plan. I am afraid, when I stand so close by and watch that quick, terrible needle flash up and down. I am afraid when I see that the whole world is electric, that mountains can be thrust up with the same gesture as a neuron firing inside my brain. It’s a little proof of a large thing, yes.
Every natural structure is a sign of the goodness of life. The world has lungs, the world has nerves, the world wants to carry life to every member. What difference does it make if our eyes are made to love the world, or the world is made to be loved by our eyes? We are made for each other by someone with a plan, someone who loves efficiency and also loves pleasure: loves the elegance of the way a river carves new banks, and loves the way our eyes follow the mute eloquence of a fractal.
Our bodies, and the pattern of our lives, make a gesture which is meaningful because of the very fact that some pattern exists. There is not nothing, and there is not chaos: there are patterns, and I cannot unsee them.
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photo sources: Lichtenberg figure arm; Alps from space; ice thaw; nerve; two trees; lungs; river estuary; blood vessels
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Absolutely beautiful, Simcha. Thank you.
Thanks. An interesting and enlightening post.
And hopefully it’s not just patterns, though, all the way down.
Agreed. All too often, I get too engrossed in my own microcosm and ‘ignore’ the world around me. This made me how much I love the literary trancendentalist movement, but not for the reasons that the authors envisioned… Their focus on the beauty of the world helps turn my focus to Beauty himself.
this was lovely…made me think of this verse:
“And it shall come to pass after this, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your ‘daughters’ shall prophesy: your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Moreover upon my servants and ‘handmaids’ in those days I will pour forth my spirit. And I will shew wonders in heaven; and in earth, blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke.” Joel 2:28-30
Very nice. I wrote something of a similar spirit on my blog yesterday, about my dog, who I thought might die in my arms.
amiraabuzeid.com
I will never feel alone again when I am appreciating something in nature without other people…I will remember that God loves it too. In fact he thought of it. How beautiful. Not to take away from the other meanings of this post, but that just struck me =).
I hope, someday in the not too distant future, you will have a chance to sit down and write your novel(s).
Beautiful and enlightening post. Thank you, Simcha.
Requiring my bigger kids to read this when they get up (the doubting teen, the CF teen, and the ornery 10 year old ~ thank you!
I’ve never understood why some would insist that the existence of science is incompatible with the existence of God. I believe that the laws of physics only prove the perfection of His creation, His attention to detail, etc. To insist otherwise only demonstrates people’s weak knowledge of—or contempt for—Christian religion.
Great post, but don’t forget the placenta and its vessels! I am also intrigued by this theory (although I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the website): http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/2008/november/7/raw-food-cures-from-god.htm
I have a relative who is a photographer. An awesome one. She has such an eye for beauty. Yet she does not believe in God. She loves God in His creation but does not even know it! It’s one of the saddest things!
I’ve thought about this in regards to orbits, the great orbits of our universe, the solar system, right on down to electrons orbiting the nucleus. Your writing has been especially wonderful lately, Simcha. That Benedicta must be an inspiration!
One of the most beautiful posts I’ve read in a long, long time. Thank you for this, Simcha!
I love this, Simcha. Hitchen’s schoolboy anecdote is also a good reminder/corrective that we can’t simply feed trite religious niceties to inquiring young minds—platitudes like “the fact that the world is green means God is good” insults the intelligence if they are used to shut down and smooth out questions, rather than foster wonder.
This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read.
I too was interested in fractals and chaos theory as a young man. Your post demonstrates the divinity in all living things and that God has a purpose of all living things.
It is beautiful also, how Mr. Hitchen’s life/story, brought you to write this. Little do many of us know as young children the greatness that God has set for us. Truly Mr. Hitchen’s story brought of the beauty and history of your relationship and experiences with God expressed in a very touching and heartfelt message to us all.
I look forward to reading more from you.
BEAUTIFUL,
I too was meditating along these lines, after considering what Jennifer Fulwiler posted yesterday. The perfection of God’s hand print is simply everywhere. Thank you for the lovely pictures and lyrical words to illustrate the point.
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One day, while discussing evolution with my oldest child, I was reflecting on what someone had once told me: that evolution could not be possible because, (among other reservations) the law of entropy would not allow for it. “We ARE evolving” I told my son, “because God never leaves His creation alone…All of creation is like poetry…and God continues to write it.”
Inspiring words. I’ve always enjoyed and marveled at the beauty of God’s hand in creation. You’ve given me yet another way to look at it.
Fractal patterns. Proof God knew we Adam would fracture us, proof God can still make us beautiful.
The beauty of God exists every where, we just have to look.
Beautiful!
as an aside, you may want to also look at the Mandelbrot set and others from fractal geometry…mathematical proof that all things are connected and purposefully made
I often notice that mountain ranges and ocean waves and clouds can have the same profiles. Coincidence? Unlikely.
Beautiful…we see God’s will everywhere in Creation for all exists as He wills it! Much here to contemplate and be grateful for…Thanks Simcha!
This is the best I’ve read or seen of you. Wonderful.
This is exactly what I think when I look at life and nature. How can it NOT be some part of a greater whole? I always feel bad for people who can’t see it that way; it seems like they’re missing out.
A poet form my country (translation is not excellent, but you’ll understand) wrote:
God emanates as light from each and every created thing and every moving life.
A lonely stone on the beach has a halo of His breath, and pouring it in the morning and evening, as the purple fluid, brilliance of the sun that cannot be seen.
He is like the warmth in the breath of all that lives.
He is like a quiet glow and a great silence in which the voice who denies Him is heard.
He is so good in being silent, so some already think He doesn’t exist.
And he is a quiet heart of all atoms.
So beautiful, so true!
A poet from faraway country wrote this (translation isn’t superb, but you’ll understand):
God emanates as light from each and every created thing and every moving life.
A lonely stone on the beach has a halo of His breath, and pouring it in the morning and evening, as the purple fluid, brilliance of the sun that cannot be seen.
He is like the warmth in the breath of all that lives.
He is like a quiet glow and a great silence in which the voice who denies Him is heard.
He is so good in being silent, so some already think He doesn’t exist.
And he is a quiet heart of all atoms.
So very true. From today’s (Friday’s) Old Testament reading, Hosea 14:
“I will be like the dew for Israel:
he shall blossom like the lily;
He shall strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
and put forth his shoots.”
Right on, sister.
You are an incredible writer, Simcha. The last paragraph alone was gorgeously written, felt even more like a poem than an essay.
That said, I feel it’s important to bring up the second half of what Hitchens was saying, with that anecdote. This was explored in his book, “God is Not Great”. He goes on to multiple examples where nature cannot be perceived as evidence of higher good, nature that is not beautiful, not magnificent… just terrible, massive, cruel and ultimately, and mostly importantly, indifferent.
In a physics class once we got into a discussion about the “music of the spheres” and the fact that light and so many other physical bodies vibrate or move with the same ratios as exist in the musical scale. I was reminded of the creation myths of so many societies that claim the world was sung into being. There truly are so many beautiful patterns in the world on both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. I’m absolutely convinced that God has built these into creation to satisfy the wonder of the inner child in all of us.
Before I read the article to her, my Mum (a midwife) said of the river estuary, ‘oh that is a placenta.’
Patterns. Body. Earth.
Ohhhh…
It’s also striking that an abstract mathematical expression — the Fibonaci series, that produces a outwardly-spiraling pattern — is seen throughout nature, in everything from the shell of nautilus and the heart of a sunflower to the arms of a galaxy. Pattern, and order, and purpose, reflected throughout creation.
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For that matter, mathematics itself should bring us all up short. It’s pure abstraction and logical reasoning, yet it turns out that it describes physical reality perfectly…in fact, physical reality, as far as we can observe, itself only approximates mathematics, and mathematics has predicted the existence of fundamental properties of nature before they were ever discovered. Again, there is more to reality than our five poor senses can tell us, although they can hint to us where to look if we choose to do so: pattern, and order, and purpose, reflecting an infinite Mind.
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Beautiful.
It’s also striking that an abstract mathematical expression — the Fibonaci series, that produces an outwardly-spiraling pattern — is seen throughout nature, in everything from the shell of nautilus and the heart of a sunflower to the arms of a galaxy. Pattern, and order, and purpose, reflected throughout creation.
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For that matter, mathematics itself should bring us all up short. It’s pure abstraction and logical reasoning, yet it turns out that it describes physical reality perfectly…in fact, physical reality, as far as we can observe, itself only approximates mathematics, and mathematics has predicted the existence of fundamental properties of nature before they were ever discovered. Again, there is more to reality than our five poor senses can tell us, although they can hint to us where to look if we choose to do so: pattern, and order, and purpose, reflecting an infinite Mind.
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Beautiful.
Lovely reflection. I cannot understand Atheism - I think it is merely the Faith of saying “NO”. To ponder Portia’s defense of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, (The quality of mercy is not ... etc etc) and still claim there is no God, amounts in my opinion to declaring ones self to be mentally defective.
Astronomer Fred Hoyle, upon realizing the sheer precision of the universe—without which precision we would not exist—reasonably concluded that the whole thing is rigged, i.e intended, created. The adamant atheists, on the other hand—arguing a materialism of the gaps, and abandoning science—conclude that there must therefore be multiple, undetectable universes, of infinite possibilities.
This was beautiful on so many levels….blessings.
Very nice post
Thank you Simcha for sharing your grace. “,...the world wants to carry life to every member.” and you helped carry some to me.
They are called fractals—look them up. Very beautiful, but no proof of any intelligent design.
Simcha already referred to fractals in the actual post.
just WOW
Could you source your cataclysmic electrical discharge mountain theory for me? I’m having trouble finding it
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