Worth

Who am I?

A question that tugs at the bottom of every soul.

What is worth, what is of worth?

We are made in the image of the Creator, blood, dust and bone. We are reflections of a singular and unfathomable will. We are the children of the Word that fell from His lips onto the world.

There is something inherently of value in us, of us, that we radiate. It is in what we are, it is in the unlimited potential of the DNA in our cells, we are the many, we are the variegated, and we are the host of possibilities. There is something of His eternity in the incredible manifold paths that the complexities of biology offer us.

And that is merely in our form, our shape, our dust. And He showed fit to give us something more. He gave us His breath, the animus, the soul, the ability to choose. He gave us choice. He gave us the capability of understanding.

A question then follows, regarding understanding. We ask, especially to the literal translation: If Eve knew, truly knew the fullest consequences of her actions, would she have bit into that apple? Would she have enslaved us, a world, to thousands upon thousands of years of pain and suffering? Would the mother of us all condemn us in a moment, for the sake of knowledge? And yet, to push the literal translation, even her limited understanding of a choice between God and self would mean that she knew of good and evil.

Regardless, there is something rotten at the core of us all. There is a malignity to us, and it colors every decision that we make. We are bent, and everything we do is thrown askew. Yet, I ask, are we broken, in the fullest sense of the word? Are we incapable of understanding altogether, that we are totally and absolutely lost? Would being this broken not even allow us to be capable of self-reflection? Would we not even know how broken we are, unable to answer the question to why we mess everything up?

Do we mess everything up?

A man called Tolkien said once, “We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed, only by myth-making, only by becoming a "sub-creator" and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall.”

But. But: Are we not the reflection of a God that is perfect? Are we not the refractors of a pure Light? Is there not something in us that calls to Him? Is there not something in all of us that recognizes we are the vessels of His Light, His greatness? Is there not some worth in that?

We see through a mirror darkly.

So: the problem. We can’t, being the instruments of our own destruction, engineer a way out that destruction. If we see sin as death, in and out of this mortal coil, a death in the little sense during our life, and a death after we pass, then we’re f*cked. It takes something to straighten us. It takes something to repair this “broken” soul.

It takes something like Jesus. For God so loved the world. Notice the language. Notice what it says. He LOVED the world. He saw worth in it. He saw something worthy of redemption. He saw something that needed to come back to Him.

It is true that we cannot manufacture this worthiness by anything we do, for in the end it falls short of its mark, it bends in its skewed flight, it misses the target. It is not complete, it is not perfect. But that we do, that we know, that we try, that very fact is from what we inherently are, the image of God. We seek after His face even though we cannot give the very search its words. We look for transcendence; we look for that purpose, engage in that passion that will deliver us to something better. Worth comes then, when we are our truest selves, an independent agent of the Will of God, spun into the world. We see this, in the image of who Jesus is, and what he’d done. The greatest thing a man can do is lay his life down for his friends, a free act of volition, not some prescribed fate. Our worth is immeasurable, for God took an immeasurably worthy Son and had him die for us. Our price has been the death of the Son of God.

Let us hold to the value of this worth, with humility and gratitude. For we are bought, purchased with a coin of infinite value.

The Pipe: Worldline

The idea of a timestamp is a curious one. It locks in a word, a phrase, a sentence typed into the temporal ether. You chat, you text, write an email, or a letter, and those words, those ideas suddenly have a place, in all four dimensions. It is no longer floating free. It becomes concrete, solid. Real.

I came across the idea of a worldline, and it struck me as poetic. You could say Einstein, who came up with the notion, was the poet of physics, and indeed the way he interacted with science was with an artist's genius. It goes like this: a worldline is the sequential path of something through both time and space, from the moment it is created to the moment of it's non-existence. A worldline is the string that binds us to place in this universe, as we know and see and perceive it. Invisible to the naked eye, but as real as the touch of the keyboard beneath my fingertips.

When we are gone, when we no longer exist, our worldines ended in this place, that string remains. A record of ourselves is left behind in some form or fashion. In the gametic DNA that we pass on, in our letters, or in some book. We weave together, one string ravelling into another.

A ship's worldline is it's log. It must contain the date and the position, and you can see the course that it charted through the brine and spray. This is my log, as small and insignificant as it is. This is where I can stamp my mark and say: Phil was here.

The Pipe: Dream Space

Dreams take up space. They make a home in your heart, and reside there for a time. Sometimes they pass away, like friends you know you'll never see. And sometimes other dreams, like new friends, come by and make life exciting again. And sometimes, like old friends, they come back after a while, and you strike up a conversation you never thought you would have again.

Let me tell a story about myself. I was in high school, in a place that was so terribly out of touch with my inner landscape. I read books like an addict, devouring imagery and story and character like a starving child. I particularly liked books about fantasy and science fiction, because it was about things that never happened in Vulcan, Alberta, Canada. The middle of nowhere. I like books about fantasy, because they always had some farmboy character that started out where I was at, young and naive (and from the middle of nowhere), and through his adventures became strong and powerful and honorable.

I also was a cabin leader during the summers at a camp I had gone to in my childhood. I had begun the painful journey about understanding the evils of the world, the real life evils, through camp. I had campers that were difficult to deal with, kids that wouldn't listen and would commit bizarre acts, like trying to spray one's self with the fire extinguisher (no flames were present), randomly hitting people, and kids that would run away. I seemed to attract them, and through the many camp experiences I began to see that I could not ignore the pain that was present in their lives, and their inability to articulate it, or do anything about it. I knew then, in a way that I couldn't myself express at the time, that I wanted to be their witness. A witness to the stories you will not necessarily hear on the news, a witness to stories that usually don't have happy endings, a witness to things that would make your ears bleed.

And I also began to write, while in high school. I wrote fan fiction. Which, over time, became better fan fiction. I wrote essays that pushed the boundaries of my vocabulary, essays that would provoke my teachers to discussion about something other than the bland political facts that were being shoveled into my brain. I learned that I love Shakespeare, especially speaking it aloud, and especially Hamlet.

Finally I began to love coffee, an attraction that began in away only it could, in Germany, in Europe. My first drink, alcoholic, was a Cafe Amaretto. It was also the first experience I had with espresso. Luckily, my attraction was to the latter, not the former. I had many coffee shop discussions with passionate German youth, my own age, about politics, religion, and everything in between. We stayed past closing in coffee shops, the owner watching with a merry gleam in his eye. I wanted to be that owner. I wanted to provide that place where words could be bantered, and the lattes free flowing, and closing was when I decided to.

I took part of a writing program offered to high school students through the University of Calgary. It was called (W)rites of Passage. Clever, no? We were encouraged to write fiction, poetry, or creative non-fiction. I immediately chose fiction, and pondered over the subject. My first inkling came from a discussion at camp. If I had a superpower, what would it be. Being the bleeding heart that I was at the time, I wanted (among other superpowers), the ability to be an empath, to feel other's emotions, and somehow transmute them (for good or ill). So, I began to write a short story. I wrote. Then I wrote some more. Then I realized it was close to the deadline, and I had written no short story, but a novella. Some 22 pages of times new roman 12pt font. Completely original.

There was a crowd of people, mostly family of the students that came to hear, that listened to an excerpt of that short story. It was official, we were told. This was an academic conference, and having present papers at it, we were officially published authors. Oh man, I felt it. It was a glow that I could have all my own. It was one of the best moments, day, of my life. Apparently, people even liked it.

So. I entered into university, on a degree that combined Business and English. Business for that coffee shop I would someday own, and English, so I could develop my writing. It was a beautiful dream, and my first year of university was bliss. It was a dream that I had.

Can you hear the "but"? But, life happened. I had a series of bad experiences once I began living on my own. I had some really good ones too, but they were intermixed with a story of addiction and broken hearts, and a search for a purpose. I became convinced that I should become a doctor. I thought that it would be the best thing that could do with this mythical "potential" I was told that I had. I appropriated the dream for myself with others. And for a time it flourished. I struggled though. I struggled with school, I found science hard. I found it harder than anything else that I had put my mind to up to that point. It didn't come naturally to me, like the way that words sometimes can. I had to force myself to learn things that I couldn't see a reasonable end to learning them. I failed a math course, when I never failed a course in my life. And I was too stubborn to see that this dream took up too much space.

I gave up the life, with its unpredictability, of becoming a writer. I traded in one dream, set it aside for later, promising that I would come back to it after I was done being a doctor. And for a dream, being a doctor is a good one. It's intoxicating, I love House and Grey's Anatomy. I love hearing the expert words they speak, their quick judgments saving lives. I love the idea of being a doctor. But I hate having to learn to get there.

Intuition is often how I approach things, not concretely, not sequentially. I come upon things by the sides, around corners. I struggle with pushing details through my cranium. I can't encapsulate them and cage them, and set them in a row. So learning math is as hard as learning another language for me. Learning biochemistry is like living in another country. I can do it, but at the cost of an effort that takes a lot out of me. And it would herculean for me to do with an A grade.

So I'm realizing that as noble a dream being a doctor is, the rest of my life suffers. My art, as poor and scarce as it is, would wither while I pursue that dream. My relationships with people would be sacrificed. Time would (and has) become a thing I could never have. Sanity would probably be left behind.

And realizing that, saying it verbally, has lifted an immense weight off my shoulders. I've been thinking about letting this thing go for over a year. I've been wondering if I could do it and still be the person I want to be, and now I know.

And now I can have a conversation with an old friend.