Hubble Telescope Picture
Quantum mechanics and experiments with particles have taught us that the world is a continuous, restless swarming of things, a continuous coming to light and disappearance of ephemeral entities. A set of vibrations, as in the switched-on hippie world of the 1960s. A world of happenings, not of things.
Carlo Rovelli
Our gentle God created our kind to be kind by making it impossible
for us to exist without caring for those both like and unlike us.
Stanley Hauerwas
How do we understand our interactions with each other? In the 60’s we used the greeting “What’s happening?” and now I see how very profound that question is after reading a wonderful book by Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Proximate to this experience is reading Stanley Hauerwas’s The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, and here we find some answers about our lives together.
After an invitation to be godfather by a dear friend and colleague, we are blessed by yearly letters to his godson on the anniversary of his baptism. These are both intimate and profound descriptions of how we can live into who we are called to be. These happenings are titled and described as virtues.
The good news is that these virtues/happenings are, like the letters, gifts that come unexpectedly. It happens within those relationships that we describe as our lives together. It is the pilgrimage and signposts of our lives.
My response to each of these authors is deep gratitude for the gift of my life. I was reminded of my parents and thankful for their lives as godparents. My prayer is that my life will be named as a worthy adventure. It has certainly has been an adventure!
Marvin
References:
NASA Photo
Rovelli, Carlo. Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (p. 33). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Hauerwas, Stanley. The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson (Kindle Locations 411-412). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
Hage, ML Joy
