Faith And Science

3 am. You know what time it is? Blog time!

So I know it’s been awhile. Nothing exciting has happened, I promise. I went to the beach for Christmas. Made the other two girls I was with mad cause I used all the hot water... hehe. 

Let me see... I’ll tell some more birth stories. So. My last two catches were pretty cool. The first one, on the 10th, came in fully, ready to push, baby right there. We almost transported her because she was 42 1/7 weeks. But I did an IE and the baby was right there. She pushed well and delivered my smallest baby yet. 4 lbs 10 oz. 

So then, two days later, I was last up, but it was a busy shift so I got a labor anyways. She was in a lot of pain, but really sweet. She and I talked a lot about labor and how it all works and what was going on. She ended up giving birth on her knees, leaning forward onto the bed. It was a really good birth. They named the baby Micah Fay. After the birth, my patient and I talked over everything that happened and really just processed together. She and her husband gifted me with a bag of fruit. It was a very, very good birth. 

Shhh! I'm balancing my chakras!

I’ve started doing more yoga. I’ve noticed an improvement in my posture and flexibility. Hopefully I’ll be able to do the splits by the time I go home! I’ve also been making a point of eating more vegetables. I’ve actually been doing a really good job with that. I’ve found a few recipes I like. I can’t say I’ll be going vegetarian any time soon, but I am well on my way to liking veggies a lot more than I used to. 

Oh my goodness. I can’t think anymore. My allergies are acting up so my brain is all stuffy. I’ve been taking more vitamin C and drinking immune system boosting green tea, so hopefully that will help. If my nose keeps running like this I’m going to have to enter it into a marathon. 

Ok. It’s no longer 3 am. It wasn’t allergies. I have a cold. Full blown, stuffy nose, sinus pressure, aches and pains. Eww. It’s miserable. I’ve been taking vitamin C and drinking lots of tea. I took some Benadryl earlier, but it doesn’t seem to be helping all that much. It’s always lame when you’re sick enough to feel bad, but not sick enough to stay home from work. 

It’s only 4 months until I graduate and then 6 until I head home. I can’t believe it’s so close to being over. It seems like I just got here yesterday. My mom was asking me the other day if anything surprises me anymore or if everything just seems normal. I can definitely say that everything seems so normal. You get used to things, the heat, the bugs, the food, the culture. After awhile, none of it phases you anymore. It’s weird. 

Pictured: Not Falling

Despite being sick, today is a good day. My spirit feels happy. Sure, physically, I’m kind of miserable. But inside, I just feel so happy. I blame Jesus. Hehe. I think part of it is that I need strength right now and the joy of the Lord is my strength. Right now my two choices are be happy or fall to pieces. I have to run so I don’t fall. One of my favorite authors wrote a short essay about a foal she once saw. It was six days old. She talked about how wobbly the foal was, too wobbly to walk. It had to run or else it’s legs would give out and it would fall. Sometimes, momentum is the only thing keeping us upright. 

That makes me think of physics. Think about it. The only thing holding us on to the surface of the planet is the spin of the earth, moving at 1000 miles per hour as we careen through space at 67,000 miles per hour in a solar system that spins at 885,139 miles per second in a universe that is nearly infinite and still expanding. The only thing that holds us together is the G-force. Ever been on one of those spinning fair rides? Like the teacups that smash you against the wall? It’s like that, but on a much huger and faster scale. So that’s it right there. We’re all smashed up against the wall of reality on a giant, cosmic fair ride. Insanity. Divine insanity. I love it.

You are... here?

I don’t know if that made any sense to anyone at all. But I like the way it sounds. That’s what happens when I read about physics. It doesn’t always make sense to me, but I like it. 

Cosmic Sciency Death Machine?

Now, back to the whole rotation thing. If we were to stop moving, if the solar system stopped rotating, if the earth stopped going around the sun or stopped spinning around and around, we’d all fall off. We’d float away into space like untethered astronauts. Gravity, the spin, the pull, that’s what keeps on on the ground. But, scientists don’t know why gravity works! It’s something to do with mass. But, they have no idea why we have mass. There’s a key component missing. A cog in the machine that they just can’t seem to find. That’s why they have the Large Hadron Collider. 

The LHC shoots atoms through a tube and crashes them together in an effort to smash them into bits (called Quarks) so that scientists can then study those bits and figure out what we’re made of. Sure, we’re made of molecules and atoms and DNA and RNA and lipids and phospholipids and all that, but what are they made of? What makes up an atom? What gives an atom mass so that it doesn’t float away? That’s the big question. That would be the Higgs-Boston particle. The Higgs-Boston particle is, in essence, imaginary. They don’t know if it exists or not, but that’s what they’re looking for when they smash atoms together with enough force that people worry about it ripping a hole in reality. It supposedly gives everything mass, holds it all together like some great cosmic glue. 

The Rainbow Colored Building Blocks Of The Universe...

If you ask me, the Higgs-Boston particle is far more spiritual than all that. I think, and I’m no scientist so this may be totally loopy, the Higgs-Boston particle, the glue of reality, it’s one of two things to me, it’s either our spirits or the voice of God itself. Why not? What if, it is the spirit of God, his very voice, inside of us all, keeping everything from just falling to pieces?

I like physics...

I don’t even know what happened there. One moment I’m talking about being happy and the next I’m going off about theoretical physics. It must be the Benadryl.

It really does amaze me though, physics and the spiritual really do go hand in hand when you look at it. For the longest time, I didn’t really like science. I put way more stock in faith. However, if you think about it, they’re kind of the same thing. God laid down rules when He made the earth. And while He is not restricted by those rules, He does tend to work inside of them. Just because we don’t know or understand all the rules doesn’t mean they’re not there. Why couldn’t there be a scientific explanation for the spiritual and the miraculous? I’ve heard it said before that magic is just science we don’t understand. The spiritual is very similar. Are there things that will always be unexplainable? I think so. Can God be analyzed and categorized and put in a jar with formaldehyde and synthesized? Absolutely not. 

And here’s the other thing that gets me about science and faith. As non scientists, don’t we take everything science says on faith? I once explained it like this. I was talking to an atheist online. They used the typical argument of, “You can’t see, taste, touch, hear, smell God. You’re just taking a man’s word that He’s there. You just read it in a book and believe it. That’s stupid, I don’t believe in something that has no empirical evidence.”

This was my response. “Ok. You don’t believe in God? I don’t believe in air.”

He said, “That’s dumb. Science tells us that air is real. Without air you’d die.”

So I continued, “That’s just the thing. I can not, for myself see, taste, touch, hear, or smell air. We are not scientists. We don’t know what is entailed in all the science behind deciding if air is real. We simply have take a scientist’s word that it’s there. I read it in a science book and believed it. Therefore, believing in air is just as stupid as believing in God. Either way, I myself have no empirical evidence of either one. I just take it on faith that without air I would die. I also take it on faith that without God, I’d die.”

His only response was “Well said my friend, well said.”

How’s that for faith and science? They go hand in hand. 

I’m going to stop rambling about science now. I promise. I just hope some of that made sense. My head is all fuzzy from being sick. I don’t know if I’m coherent or not. I feel like while everything I just wrote makes sense to me now, I’m going to come back tomorrow and it’s all going to be gibberish. I hope not. 

Anyways, thanks to you all for putting up with me and my weirdness. I love you all and thank you for your prayers and support!

Your Midwife Suddenly Turned Mad Scientist,

Ashton