Moving to Rochester in 1995

Late in 1994 we were living in Omaha, Nebraska, and I was working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. It was a great job in a fun place. It was kind of ironic, because not too many years before, I had been making fun of my brother, Rob, for being “stuck” in Nebraska while my family was feeling smug during my postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech in Pasadena. I think he had the last laugh when my best job offer in 1991 came from another Nebraska institution, bringing us about an hour from him.

In 1994 a younger friend from my postdoctoral days mentioned having visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, on a job interview. He knew our roots were in Madison, and Rochester was a lot nearer to Wisconsin than Nebraska. With two young daughters, the distance (eight hours in a minivan, playing the same audio or video tapes over and over) was a challenge. He mentioned that the Mayo Clinic had a surprisingly large research program (that neither of us had ever heard about), and that they were generous with their resources.

For some reason, though I was plenty happy in Omaha, I sent a copy of my resume to the Mayo Clinic. Specifically, I sent it to Dr. Larry Miller, who was heading a committee seeking to build a new research team of scientists interested in gene therapy. Mayo Clinic was calling the program “Molecular Medicine.” That was kind of humorous, since practically all biomedical scientists are engaged in “molecular medicine,” but this was my first experience with the Mayo Clinic tradition of giving a fancy name to something that is actually not so fancy.

Dr. Larry Miller was a charming physician-scientist with a thick moustache. He worked in gastroenterology and did research. Dr. Larry Miller wasn’t really sure how they were going to recruit their team of “Molecular Medicine” experts. The initial strategy could be summarized as “one-at-a-time.” It later turned out that this strategy was inadequate, and a more successful strategy involved recruiting British team leader Dr. Steve Russell, who anchored recruitment of an impressive international group. But we get ahead of ourselves.

Dr. Larry Miller was trying to get the first scientist or two to sign on. I remember looking at the highway map one evening in Omaha, trying to figure out where Rochester was. It was only about 3 hours from Madison, and Laura and I were enchanted to see that it lay on Highway 14, a curving route that wandered through La Crosse and eventually became University Avenue, the main street in Middleton, Wisconsin, the Madison suburb where we had grown up. Quaint.

Dr. Larry Miller arranged to meet me at the airport for a visit. He had a nice car, and impressed me with a beautiful pastoral drive through the country for about 10 miles before we burst into downtown Rochester and found the Mayo Clinic. Rochester is a lot smaller than Omaha, Nebraska, and this also felt quaint. Dr. Miller pointed out along the way back to the airport (also through the pastoral country route) that he lived in a lovely wooded area, near the famed Mayowood Mansion. This provided another inviting introduction to Rochester.

I wasn’t convinced that “Molecular Medicine” was exactly the right fit for what we did in my laboratory research, but I remained intrigued with some of the very generous aspects of Mayo’s employment package. I agreed to visit a second time.

Dr. Larry Miller again met me with his nice car, we drove the lovely agricultural route into Rochester, and we had a bunch of meetings. On this trip Dr. Miller took time to drive me around town a bit, and I saw some attractive neighborhoods. Toward the end of the time, Dr. Miller kindly took me to his home for a snack, and a view of a beautiful pastoral valley, framed in his picture window.

“Just look at it,” he said, gazing at the green farm fields and a new sub-division sneaking into the valley. “They told me this would be farmland forever…now look at those houses down there.”

I could tell from his tone that he was just slightly disgusted about the suburban sprawl, so I steered the conversation to his nice custom home, and whether he had deer in his yard and things like that. Soon it was time to head back through the farmlands to the Rochester International Airport.

I think there was a third trip to Rochester, and I met with a different set of scientists seeking to recruit a new faculty member to the more traditional “Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.” This turned out to be a better fit. Dr. Eric Wieben helped with the recruitment, but I think Dr. Larry Miller continued to do most of the shuttling to and from the airport. I thought that was very nice, if slightly weird.

To make a long story short, we decided to move to Rochester. I remember one evening when we made the final decision about whether to sell our house in Omaha. I even had to call the Mayo Clinic administrator, a Mr. Ames Putnam (I love that name), to confirm that there really was a job offer waiting for me. The whole thing seemed pretty informal, and the Omaha move seemed pretty irrevocable.

Two particularly humorous episodes were associated with the actual process of moving to Rochester. The first involved driving my research group from Omaha in order to get their impressions of this Minnesota city where I had decided to relocate. The goal was to convince as many group members as possible to sign onto the move and maintain lab momentum.

We arrived one summer afternoon in a caravan of cars. It was about 100 degrees. We drove up Highway 63, the Broadway of Rochester. We passed the international airport, and I then realized (for the first time) that Highway 63 continued straight, whereas Dr. Larry Miller had always gone a “different way” that wound through the countryside. I didn’t think much of it until I started to behold the true character of south Broadway heading into Rochester. This route conveyed a singularly unimpressive and somewhat seedy message about Rochester—a string of discount motels, muffler shops, a tattoo parlor or two, a bar or two. . .or three. There on the right was a large scrap metal yard. One could see Mayo Clinic buildings in the distance, but my students were preoccupied with silently surveying this dumpy welcome to Rochester. I could swear I had never seen this city before. I think I even said that out loud with a kind of lame laugh.

I was stunned. Dr. Larry Miller had steered clear of this blight through all of his cleverly-orchestrated tour guiding. Well done, Dr. Miller, search committee chairman.

I had already accepted the job.

I was starting to seriously think about back-tracking and looking for the Dr. Larry Miller pastoral route into town, hoping it might erase the increasingly negative impression my students were receiving.

Then I saw it. Just when I had hoped that we had passed the worst of south Rochester, it appeared on the skyline to our right. No, it was not some flashy Mayo Clinic research building or some restored classic historic structure from the era of the Mayo brothers. I actually didn’t know exactly what it was except that it was tall, suspicious, and nobody had mentioned it during all our recruitment experiences in Rochester.

As we drove closer it became clear that my eyes were not playing tricks on me. One of the students groaned. There before us stood perhaps the largest “ear of corn effigy” in the continental United States (actually in the world). I was a factory water tower painted with some serious attention to detail.

Two thoughts hit me simultaneously. What had motivated some Rochester company to commit this corporate graffiti against an innocent water tower? More to the point, was this civic embarrassment the reason that Dr. Larry Miller had so carefully and consistently steered his nice car through the lovely Rochester countryside, conveniently dodging south Broadway and this monstrosity?

I wondered if anyone had actually ever been successfully recruited to Mayo Clinic after accidentally seeing this thing.

I imagined some Mayo Clinic recruitment policy manual instructing on processes for avoiding the “corn effect” until an unsuspecting recruit had agreed to terms.

Amazingly, most of my lab group members found enough at the world famous Mayo Clinic to overcome the “corn effect.” It was close though.

The other humorous and slightly uncomfortable moment came a month later after the move was complete. I met Dr. Larry Miller in the hall and small talk was exchanged. He asked the oft-repeated question:

“So, whose house did you buy?”

This query, innocent enough, implied that most thoughtful new Mayo Clinic recruits would purchase from among the lovely historic residences near the Mayo Clinic, the so-called “Pill Hill” district. Homes were practically handed down from physician to physician through the years. “Whose house?” was a simple way to phrase the question tactfully.

I mentioned to Dr. Larry Miller that, in fact, we had purchased a new home under construction, and made some modifications as it was being completed.

“Where?”

“Oh, down on the southwest side. Actually it’s not far from…"

It then came rushing to me all at once. Our new home in our nice new subdivision looked out on what remained of a cornfield and up toward a pleasant wooded hillside…

…where Dr. Larry Miller’s house looked down on us.

12.20.09

comments at a 30th high school reunion

I've been asked to offer a prayer of thanks for the food we will be enjoying at our class reunion meal this evening. I am touched by this honor.

Before we pray, I would like to make just a few personal comments.

I have had the chance to spend time with a number of you, my classmates, over the last two evenings, and I have been able to listen carefully to your stories. I have learned a lot, and what I've heard has really moved me. Sure, I heard some wonderful stories of business success and pride in family and career. But what touched me much more were the other stories. I looked into the eyes of classmates, some of whom I've known since Kindergarten. I saw your tears as I heard you quietly tell me about dreams that are never going to come true, about broken relationships, and about lost jobs and career failures. I heard the pain in your voices when you mentioned divorce, wayward kids, the struggles of helping ailing parents...and children. I felt your pain when you told me the stories of the deaths of siblings, and of moms and dads. There were tears as cancer survivors mentioned their battles and their fears. Even those few words showed me that glimmer of unspeakable pain and the anguish of those long sleepless nights and terror- the loss of innocence. I've been there too. Your stories revealed great humility. As I was driving home with Laura last night, your faces and your stories were running through my mind. Your words had been both painful and beautiful. I experienced a deep sense of love for you- the friends of my youth. I am thankful for you. I am proud of you. We little kids with our child-like dreams and joys are not playing a game. We are living real life.

I thought to myself, "the Class of 1979 has grown up."

So with that in mind, please join me in a prayer of thanksgiving on this happy occasion. I think maybe this is the first time the Class of '79 has ever prayed together. This prayer is not intended to make you feel uncomfortable or offended in any way. If you'd like to pray along with me, please do. If you'd prefer to simply listen, that's fine too. I will thank the Lord for this food, but if you don't mind, I'd also like to pray for our class.

Heavenly father I love you. We love you. We thank you for this happy occasion. We thank you so much for the lovely dinner we are about to enjoy. We thank you for the way that this meal symbolizes your gracious love for us and your many provisions for our lives. We thank you for the beauty of this world, and for the rich relationships you have given us to enjoy.

Lord, beyond thanking you for this meal, I pray for my classmates. You know every heart and you have seen every tear that has ever fallen from these eyes. Please bless and comfort these dear friends. Would you please meet their needs, whether emotional, mental or physical. Would you heal damaged relationships and provide tools and wisdom to deal with sorrow and personal struggles. Lord, for those who carry the burdens of injuries or illness, please bless and heal and bring peace.

Lord, I thank you for those who know you, and I ask that you would empower them to serve others in your name. For those who don't know you or who have journeyed far from you, please remind them that you have been pursuing a relationship with them since the day they were born. Bring them home to you.

Most of all father, I thank you that you offer us a way to be forgiven and a bridge to know you personally- because of what your son Jesus accomplished when he died on the cross for us.

So now I close this prayer with the Old Testament words that many of us first learned as a song more than 30 years ago,

May the Lord bless you.
May the Lord keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you,
and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you,
and give you peace.

Amen

8/8/09

jim lipsky

I knew a man named Jim Lipsky. He had grayish hair and glasses. He was kind and quiet. He was a pharmacologist. He had a wife, Naomi, and his daughter was near the age of my daughters. I think Jim Lipsky was a little older than me, but not much. The family was Jewish. She was an artist whose quilling work featured gold leaf highlighting of beautiful Hebrew script. Plenty of Gentiles in our town owned and cherished her pieces. Their daughter was Hannah. Hannah and Naomi are beautiful names of beautiful characters from the Bible.

Jim Lipsky and I were faculty members together at the Mayo Clinic. I would see him from time to time at work—not often. A common occasion for seeing Jim Lipsky was at the spring graduation ceremony when we would don rented regalia (at least mine was rented), and enjoy the pomp and circumstance that went with giving diplomas to future doctors and scientists. I sat next to Jim Lipsky one year at graduation. I admired his robe and stole carrying the colors of Johns Hopkins University. We walked out of the hall together afterwards. We exchanged a few pleasantries. I never saw Jim Lipsky the same way again. Two days later a colleague told me that Jim Lipsky had suffered a seizure on his way home from graduation. Within a week it was learned that Jim Lipsky had malignant glioblastoma, the kind of brain tumor from which one does not recover. I was haunted by my recollection of Jim Lipsky walking out of the graduation ceremony with me. We had both been carefree, undoubtedly distracted by thoughts of work and late afternoon family responsibilities. The difference was that I went home to my late afternoon family responsibilities. Jim Lipsky had a seizure.

Jim Lipsky’s life fell apart. Jim Lipsky’s wife and daughter were dealt the hand that no bluff can overcome. Jim Lipsky and his doctors went through the prescribed motions. He had surgery and radiation. I saw him sometimes in the hall at work, his hair missing in telltale asymmetry. Jim Lipsky’s ability to speak was damaged. His ability to walk was damaged. It was just a few months before the news came that he would neither return to work nor recover. I didn’t see Jim Lipsky anymore. The Lipsky family was suffering. I was trying to imagine it and trying not to imagine it at the same time. My own cancer diagnosis had a different outcome. My cancer is slow. Jim Lipsky’s was fast. My wife and daughters imagined tragic scenarios that didn’t come true. Naomi and Hannah Lipsky were blind-sided and then fractured and then scattered. Their tragic scenario was both true and brutal. Laura and I had experienced a few sleepless and hopeless nights. Jim Lipsky and his family were stripped of all hope almost immediately. They never had a chance to catch their breath. Every night was sleepless and hopeless.

My last memory of Jim Lipsky is a difficult one. The unwanted memory lingers—perhaps because there is a quiet voice in my mind forever reminding me that my life could, at any moment, become Jim Lipsky’s life. I pulled up late one afternoon at the elementary school a block from my house. I was on my way home after work. I think it was Election Day. The school served as the polling place for our neighborhood. As I got out of my car and started toward the school I saw a parked van with its front doors open. A woman stood struggling helplessly at the curb, trying simultaneously to steady the slumping form of a man and a wheeled walker made of tubular metal. A young girl sat motionless in the back seat of the van, as if willing the scene out of her mind. It was Jim Lipsky and his wife and his daughter. This scene was the result of heroic effort by a family trying to prove that life could keep going on—even when life could not keep going on. Voting at the public school had become an epic errand, perhaps Jim Lipsky’s last epic errand. His condition had deteriorated. He could not climb back into his van. His daughter was too small or too numb to help. Naomi staggered between the van door and Jim Lipsky, her small frame unequal to the task. I admit it—there was a second when I found myself just wanting not to be there—not to be seeing this picture of the disintegration of a family in front of an elementary school in Minnesota. I wanted to hurry the other way. The quiet voice in my head wouldn’t let me turn. I walked to the van, stepped up to Jim Lipsky, and took his arm. I greeted him quietly and steadied his body. His face was full of pain. I don’t know if he recognized me. I was suddenly distraught to think that his path toward death was so physically harrowing. I had wanted to believe that he was fading from this life gently. He was not. I offered to help Naomi guide Jim Lipsky to his seat. She didn’t know me. It didn’t matter. As I looked into her eyes her tears began to flow uncontrollably. She couldn’t speak. Her face perfectly blended hopelessness, frustration, and despair. It took all my strength to lift Jim Lipsky into the passenger seat of his van. His daughter never looked up. His wife never found words as van doors closed and she started the engine. They pulled away and were gone. I was going to vote and then drive home to my girls. What was going to happen to Jim Lipsky when he got home?

I never saw Jim Lipsky again. I wish my last mental picture could be a soft shot of him sleeping peacefully in a hospice. It is not. The image will always be of a disabled man, not so much older than me, struggling by the side of a van, his wife and daughter helpless. Their vain attempt at a normal family errand had ended in pure bitterness. I still see the tears welling up from Naomi’s eyes. I hear the silence as her words failed her.

Bitterness.

Naomi means “pleasant” in Hebrew. The ancient Naomi was the mother-in-law of Ruth, the ancestor of King David, the ancestor of Jesus Christ. The Bible records Naomi’s words:

“Do not call me Naomi—call me ‘Mara’ (which means bitter) for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.”

The biblical Naomi was eventually rescued from bitterness by grace. My prayer is that Naomi Lipsky might someday find the same.

I knew a man named Jim Lipsky. Now it’s hard for me to forget him. Maybe that is OK.

2.09

mice in spain

I’ve never been to Spain, but this fall I sent four of my special personal representatives. I recently received an e-mail reporting that all four had started having sex with multiple partners. Was I concerned? No—I was delighted. Let me explain, but it’s kind of a long story.

In 1975, my freshman year of high school, I had surgery to remove a grapefruit-sized cancerous tumor from my abdomen. Chemotherapy and radiation therapy followed. A sample of the tumor was sent from Madison to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to try to figure out what kind of tumor it was (by the way, pay attention to the places mentioned in this story). The tumor was finally identified as a paraganglioma. Since I’m told that Mayo never throws away people’s tumors, it’s probably still in a warehouse someplace. Paraganglioma is rare and, fortunately, sometimes survivable. Paraganglioma is also a kind of cancer that has the nasty habit of recurring years later. I set that thought aside and pretty much ignored it (we would cue the ominous low sustained cello note if this was the screenplay).

Anyway, although I don’t remember it too clearly (being blindly in love at the time), I’m told that my parents had me go through some scans right before I was married in 1983. I guess this was to make sure that they weren’t going to be accused by my future in-laws of providing damaged goods to their daughter (ha—little did they know!). The scans, though crude, turned out negative, so the wedding proceeded with pomp and flair.

As life played out, I became a molecular biologist. In fact, I was influenced by my cancer experience. In the end, though I had intended to be an MD/PhD physician, I decided to become a research scientist in the lab. I maintained my interest in the molecules within cells, and how these molecules misbehave in cancer. Actually, the cancer part was a more of a stretch—I was really much more interested in the molecules. My surgical scar and I went through PhD training in Madison and post-doctoral training in Pasadena. I began my career as an Assistant Professor at age 30, starting four years at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

So in 1995, perhaps strangely, we found ourselves moving to Rochester, Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic (remember that name?). It was admittedly sort of a weird choice for a fundamental research scientist like me to move to a more clinical research setting. Call me unconventional, or maybe call the whole thing pre-ordained. Whatever. With wife and two daughters we moved. I resigned at Nebraska and accepted Mayo’s unique no-signature verbal job offer, and then calmly underwent Mayo’s pre-employment physical. Now to those unfamiliar with the world-famous Mayo Clinic, a Mayo physical is unlike a physical anywhere else in the world (in fact, this is literally true). No stone was left unturned. When my interesting juvenile cancer history was mentioned, the already-stunningly-rigorous physical was revved up into a real barnburner. And guess what? They found stuff. To our dismay, the summer of 1995 quickly turned from relocation party to nightmare. A cancer recurrence was discovered in my abdomen, and that was the good news. The bad news was the discovery of metastatic cancer at sites in the bones of my skull and pelvis. We had no way of knowing at the time if this was to be a fast-progressing disaster, or a slow motion (and hopefully boring) epic. The original high school surgery was 20 years (to the day) from the date of the new Mayo diagnosis. We had genuine concern that Mayo would rescind their job offer (again the damaged goods) and that Nebraska wouldn’t want me back.

In the end, things got boring. The cancer is taking its time. Over the intervening 13 years I have survived with only the inconveniences of a couple surgeries, skull radiation, a bald spot, hip radiation, and plenty of expensive scans and tests. Inconvenience is the right word, since all of this has happened within a few minutes walk of my research laboratory. The world famous Mayo Clinic has invested big time in tinkering with my health. I’m not complaining about it.

Several years ago I had an interesting gene test. It turns out that paraganglioma tumors are both rare and mysterious. My endocrinologist knew of my scientific interests, and mentioned to me that there was new evidence that certain genes seemed to be broken in the paraganglioma tumors. In fact, people that carried one of the broken genes were at especially high risk of occasionally losing the other gene in some of their cells. Loss of the second copy somehow seemed to cause paraganglioma. Remember that (warning: deliberate oversimplification) genes are coded recipes telling the cells of the body how to make different protein machines. We get one copy of each of our 25,000 or so genes from dad, and an entirely separate copy from mom. The gene test was based on a truly bizarre discovery. The broken recipe related to paraganglioma was code for a cell machine needed to effectively extract energy from blood sugar. Without these machines, a cell gets only a tiny bit of bang from each sugar molecule, and the rest goes needlessly to waste (kind of like buying a can of Red Bull energy drink, taking a sip, and then pouring the rest down the drain). This seems like a heck of a poor way to run a tumor. After all, tumors are growing fast. They are mean. It seems like they should be super efficient about extracting every bit of sweet energy from sugar, right? Not so much. Paradoxically, loss of this fancy-sounding machine (warning: deliberate use of science jargon) “succinate dehydrogenase” actually hastens the onset of paraganglioma cancers. The gene test showed me that my father had (quite by accident he assures me) passed on to me a broken succinate dehydrogenase B gene, and at least one of my cells had mismanaged the remaining copy at some point, letting the cancer get started (I currently blame this genetic mismanagement on disorientation induced by the cavity-prone years of middle school).

Though my lab interests remained focused on other kinds of molecular machines, I found the idea that inept cellular sugar digestion could cause cancer to be irresistibly bizarre. And to my great fortune, one of my pioneering graduate students, Emily H. Smith, also found it irresistibly bizarre. So irresistible (and/or bizarre), in fact, that she did her PhD thesis research by engineering smaller organisms to have the same genetic defect as her mentor (OK, bizarre is the better word). She made considerable progress by studying lowly baker’s yeast cells. This friendly domesticated single-celled microorganism is a wonderful lab subject with its fully sequenced and cataloged genes, its ease of manipulation, and its willingness to grow fast and furiously on cheap nutrients in Petri dishes. This is not to mention the billions of yeast that selflessly offer up their lives for bread products every day (cultural diversity note: the yeast are given a fungal reprieve at Passover in observant Jewish homes). Anyway, Emily H. Smith discovered and published that there were several very interesting problems going on inside yeast cells when the succinate dehydrogenase B machines were broken. Some of the ideas might even make it to further tests for relevance to human tumors someday, even though (regrettably) yeast cells don’t seem to get cancer.

So what does this have to do with Spain? It turns out that Emily H. Smith’s other project was to make a different small organism with the same gene problem that I have. Emily H. Smith built mice like me. Mind you, they still look like normal brownish lab mice (much to our relief, and to theirs). Having worked for some years with lab mice, I must admit that I have pulled rank and left the breeding, care and feeding of these (warning: deliberate use of science jargon) gene-trapped heterozygous succinate dehydrogenase B disruption mice to (now Dr.) Emily H. Smith (now PhD), and her capable protégé, Emily M. Bystry (yes, it is confusing that they are both named Emily). I also must admit that I have sometimes peeked into the mouse lab to look appreciatively at these mice that (unwillingly) share an aspect of my genetic blueprint. Anyway, the hypothesis was that at least some of these innocent mice would, like me, get paraganglioma tumors. Then we could use the animals to study ideas for new therapies and all sorts of exciting things (and get rich and famous). Not so much. The mice have so far had the last laugh, I mean squeak. After months of breeding, and plenty of invested time and money, the animals refuse to mismanage their remaining succinate dehydrogenase B genes, and they are living to ripe old ages and dying of other things (like ripe old age). We’ve even made new super-duper versions of the mice that should be especially prone to losing their remaining succinate dehydrogenase B gene copies. A whole colony of these fancier mice are up in the mouse lab now, also, unfortunately, living happily to ripe old ages without paraganglioma.

I suppose not many scientists actually care much about paraganglioma. It is a rare and bizarre disorder. But guess what—there are paraganglioma enthusiasts in Seville, Spain. And they have bred special mice. Their mice have a different kind of broken succinate dehydrogenase gene (succinate dehydrogenase D), and their mice are also kicking back and living to ripe old ages without dying of paraganglioma (although I am told that they are surviving in a more exotic environment where it doesn’t get to -80˚ F outside when it’s winter). So what do research groups on two different continents do when they both have fancy mice that were expensive to make but uncooperative about getting cancer as intended? Correct—they try to figure out a way to intermingle the two kinds of broken succinate dehydrogenase genes (B and D) to double the chance that the mice will get the cancer. Conveniently, it turns out that mice have devised and perfected a great solution to this challenge: it’s called mating. The only trick is to get some of the Rochester heterozygous succinate dehydrogenase B mice to make the trip to meet (and greet…) the charming and comely specialty heterozygous succinate dehydrogenase D mice of Seville, Spain. We haven’t yet figured out how to accomplish this using the internet (we’ve asked Google to start working on it).

It was a warm (but not-too-warm) fall day when a very expensive air mail shipment of four male gene-trapped heterozygous succinate dehydrogenase B mice were sealed into a pleasant ventilated container with bedding, food and water, and driven to the Rochester airport. When I say expensive, I’m not kidding. It would have literally been cheaper for both Dr. Emily H. Smith, PhD and Emily M. Bystry to buy round-trip tickets to Seville, Spain, and carry the four males (mice) distributed among their carry-on bags (my thought had been to use 1-quart capacity zip-lock bags—and claim, if challenged, that mice are somewhere between gels and liquids). I also briefly toyed with the idea of installing a wireless web cam in the shipping cage to see what kinds of experiences the boys had with the TSA officers en route, not to mention the customs agents in Spain. Given the expense, the unpredictable jostling, and the potential for extended siesta time stranded on the sunny Mediterranean tarmac, it was with some considerable relief that I received an e-mail from my Spanish colleagues informing me that the guys had arrived safely and were “in quarantine.” This brought to mind an image of the Apollo astronauts looking out from a silver trailer window on an aircraft carrier after returning from the moon. Fortunately, like the astronauts, the four Rochester banditos emerged within a week without anything contagious. It wasn’t long before I got the second e-mail that I mentioned at the start of this story (obviously gaining enviable dramatic impact by leaving out the detail that I was talking about mice).

Based on past experience I’m not holding my breath about paraganglioma incidence among the spawn of this mousey Rochester-Seville junket. I do wonder if the four guys (now tired and smiling and the founders of their very own colony) recall their lives in the staid confines of Rochester. I suspect they still have their attention focused on the mousey heterozygous succinate dehydrogenase D females of Seville. Like I said, I’m not holding my breath. I won’t be at all surprised if the mice will again refuse to succumb to paraganglioma. One of these days I expect to get an e-mail from my Spanish colleagues conveying (with the appropriate euphemism en Español) that the new succinate dehydrogenase B/D hybrid mice are all living to a ripe old age (in Spain).

11/08

mid-life

Some years call us to dream of the future while other years remind us to take stock and reflect. 2008 brought so many moments for reflection that I have captured some impressions—partly for me, and partly to share with two daughters who can’t yet imagine what it will be like to turn 48 and face rather surprising emotions.

Despite a thousand reasons to be thankful, there was something about grieving in the air during 2008. I felt it repeatedly and was caught off guard. Grieving implies tragic or unexpected loss. Why should there be any sense of grief in my well-cared-for life, filled with grace and countless undeserved blessings? Yet there it was, a lingering sense of sorrow, maybe even regret, maybe even despair?

After thinking hard about the significant hurdles of the year, I have realized that each of us who is given the chance to reach mid life will encounter grief and regret about who we are, and about the set of choices that brought us here. I recognized four realities this year.

I live in an aging body. Reaching 48 means realizing that I will never in this life be young again. This is a physical reality. I used to enjoy jogging for exercise. Now sore joints plague even casual running. The mirror tells me that an imagined exercise plan could never really restore fitness. Cancer treatments have also left marks on my life by marking my body. Abdominal scars tighten and disfigure. Skull radiation has left a hairless patch. Radiation to the hip has created an unnatural skin darkening. There is constant uncertainty about the origin of new twinges here and there. My body has served me well, but it is starting to wear out. Admiration for its intricacies and complexities is now tempered by my recognition that it was designed to fail—eventually. There is a sense of grief and despair in beginning to say goodbye to my own body.

I am also an aging scientist. In younger professional life we convince ourselves that we may one day be famous. As a researcher, I have kept set before me a course full of challenges intended to demonstrate professional achievement: conceiving clever laboratory experiments to understand and manipulate cellular engineering, publishing impressive articles, winning prestigious research grants in competition with my peers, traveling and gaining the recognition of other scientists. Reaching these goals has made legends of some of my colleagues in science. Yet 2008 reminded me that these professional dreams are both fleeting and elusive. Few achieve much notoriety. Those who do often pay dearly for it. In truth, my research career is unlikely to bring me fame. As I get older my ideas are seldom fresh or daring. Too often I read of the experiments of others probing questions I had once intended to study. Choices I made about where to work and how to balance career and home have set me on a course that is not likely to change. There is little chance that I will make discoveries that will inspire many others or revolutionize our ideas about life and health. There is a sense of grief and despair in saying goodbye to the career dreams of my youth.

I am getting to be an old musician too. Every young rocker joins a garage band and every garage band dreams of trading life’s certainties for a daring career on the road. We imagine living in the emotions of our audiences, traveling, playing, riding on a magic carpet of adrenaline and euphoria in our music. I’ve been playing almost all my life, and a little piece of me has always been living in that dream. What if I were to be a professional musician? Could I make it? Wouldn’t it be fantastic to work with the most talented of the talented, the best and the most creative? 2008 saw me again acting as a part-time music promoter to bring some of my favorite performing artists to our community to share with my friends and our church family. It can be painful and poignant to realize that the lives of these artists are the lives we will never have. Maybe we don’t really want those lives, and maybe this becomes more clear when we meet these guests, but there is always that other voice inside saying “What if? Why not? Is it too late?” There is a sense of grief and despair for a musician to realize that he will never be a professional and that his craft will always be shabby. I must bid farewell to the musical dreams of my youth.

I have been in love with the same person for all of my adult life. The “mid-life crisis” is most famous for the toll it takes on marriages. 2008 marked 25 years of marriage for Laura and me. In fact, we’ve enjoyed each other for all of 29 years. Our daughters are now sophomores in college and high school. We had planned a romantic getaway to Mackinac Island for our 30-year anniversary, but found ourselves accelerating our timing and taking the trip this past summer. I became aware more powerfully that I have indeed chosen to love Laura for the rest of our lives. More importantly, I have chosen to be exclusive about my love for her. I may have female friends, some of them very dear, but I have chosen Laura as my mate while we both live. The implications of this vow seemed simple on a warm July day in 1983. Now I am better coming to terms with what it means to say that I really am committed to limiting my dreams and desires to this one person. I revel in a life where my intimacies and ecstasies will forever and always be about the wife of my youth. Time and choices have closed all but one door for me. Yes, in brutal honesty I must admit that there is a sense of regret in saying goodbye to the dream of some other mysterious mate.

Grief? Despair? Regret? Yes, I guess these really are the correct words if I am to be truthful about this life and this year. Natural instincts easily lead to mid-life melancholy if there is no source of external strength or purpose. Mid life is truly a dangerous place if one lives in an existential world: one faces an ever-growing proportion of life’s dreams that will never come true.
———

But wait. The sense of resignation also led to new discoveries—it was a year where grief and despair pointed to a much deeper and unthreatened joy. Mine is a life filled with external strength. I have been given what would be impossible without Him whose love for me brings purpose, meaning and significance to each choice and sacrifice.

“You know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.” Matthew 6:33-34.

“Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: he came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for the many who are held hostage.” Matthew 20:27-28

“We neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.” Ephesians 2:9-10.

This body of mine was designed to last for just a flicker of time so that I could be prepared to know Him with whom I will share timelessness. I am like a caterpillar regretting the impending chrysalis—unaware of the reality of glorious wings, flowers and warm breezes to come. This body is serving me well enough.

A life in science is about building relationships with people. My career is a worthy end in itself if it allows me to portray integrity and honesty. The way that I conduct my work is more important than the work I conduct. Resiliency and enthusiasm are priceless, regardless of who is watching or noticing. This is because the One who matters is always watching and noticing.

Who am I trying to fool by thinking that I would trade all of the people and relationships of my life for the allure of the touring musician? What a crazy idea. I have been given almost all the joys of music with few of the sacrifices. I was made to offer praise, and I have been privileged to serve by making music. If I never played another note, would I have any reason for sadness or regret?

I have been blessed beyond all measure by finding in Laura the answer to my every seeking for warmth, romance and giving. She is to be the object and target for my love and affection, and for my sacrifice. The balance of my life is not about what some other woman might have given to me—it is about what more I can give to the wife of my youth.

Yes, 2008 has taught me that grief and despair can be found even in the most blessed of lives. These emotions are natural and could easily overwhelm me at mid life. Yet if I focus on the many things I will never be, I deny focus on the purposes for which I have been created. Beyond grief, despair and regret is a rich and unfathomable joy. It reminds me that true satisfaction is found in doing and being those things for which I was designed. My daughters, when you find yourselves in my place, and that day will come so very soon, remember that you were not made for yourselves, but for Him.


11.08

living with cancer

Some may know that I have been living with a form of cancer called malignant paraganglioma. My first abdominal surgery, radiation and chemotherapy were 33 years ago. Upon moving to Rochester 13 years ago it was discovered that the tumor had recurred and spread as metastases to the bones of my skull and pelvis. Radiation therapy and more surgery followed. It was the warm embrace of the people of Autumn Ridge Church in 1995 that brought the peace of Christ to our young family during this terrifying time.

Without pain, the cancer continues to slowly show up in my skeleton as revealed by annual scans. This fall it became necessary to treat one of the sites of tumor growth in my hip. This involved 7 weeks of daily radiation therapy. There was no pain, but plenty of discomfort (and self-pity) associated with intestinal upset due to internal radiation damage.

The treatments have concluded and I want to mention a few of the reflections I shared with close friends at a celebration dinner we hosted recently.

I was reminded that when one person in a family is suffering, the whole family suffers.

The Lord showed me that, despite my own self-pity, I am surrounded by suffering people. Even during my 7 weeks of discomfort I became aware of many close friends carrying difficult burdens that made my own problems fade into insignificance. The day of my last treatment, my wife Laura learned that what appeared to be a minor skin lesion was malignant melanoma, though apparently detected early.

I became immensely thankful for the gift of music and for the wonderful family of Autumn Ridge musicians whose love and concern means more than they will every know. I found that making music provided a beautiful distraction from my self-concerns.

I learned how precious it is when one’s children have matured to the point that they no longer must be shielded from difficult realities. Our two daughters are now women whose prayers and actions comfort Laura and me.

I was reminded that suffering, even minor suffering, draws one closer to Christ and inspires authentic emotion and spiritual vision. Lyrics come alive. Tears are more frequent. Colors take on deeper hues.

I was touched by the depth of friendship and love of the people I too often take for granted. The kind words and patient actions of Tim and April Rowe meant so much 13 years ago, and so much now. As a radiotherapy supervisor in the unit where I was treated, our precious friend Mollie Baker was a constant source of joy, comfort, and good humor—a profound provision for our family.

Finally, I was reminded of the undeserved grace I have been shown in this life through God’s gift of Laura, the wife of my youth, now the wife of my middle age.

God’s grace and mercy are given in many ways, Some become particularly clear by living with cancer.



Autumn Ridge Church RidgeLines

10.08

lessons from Galileo: a summer discussion with undergraduates

For a related video recording, please click here

It is a real joy for me to be able to be with you this evening to share some ideas and to engage in some discussion. I’m a Christian and I’m a scientist, and I’ve chosen a topic that blends these two facts. It’s a topic that I hope you will also find interesting.

Besides being a Christian and a scientist, I’m also a dad with a daughter in college. I’m so pleased that Liz is here tonight with a number of her friends. Speaking as a dad, there is something I need to say right away, and right from my heart. On behalf of all of your parents, I want you to know how much we love you, and how much we miss you! Learning to let go of you is just about the hardest lesson we parents are facing. We are so proud of you!

I was raised in a church-going home, and was quite devout and religious as I grew up. Although I believed in God and had been baptized and confirmed, the truth is, I had little knowledge of God or the Bible. It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that a friend challenged me to explain the basis for my faith. When I described it to him, we both realized that I believed I had to constantly earn God’s love, and I needed to bargain with God for everything. I believed, like very many people, that God would bless me if I was good, and punish me if I was bad. Getting to heaven meant being more good than bad. It had never occurred to me that God’s standard might be perfect goodness, or that God might love me unconditionally. My friend shared a small booklet written by Billy Graham. It explained the idea that God’s love for me was extreme, and that Christ had died for my sins, to pay my lifetime of debts once and for all. Accepting that gift creates a bridge back to intimacy with my heavenly father. I was amazed by this offer, and I prayed a prayer of acceptance that changed my life. I am deeply thankful for God’s unconditional love, and for my savior’s willingness to die on the cross in my place.

And I love science. My father was a geology professor at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, so I have always been exposed to science and scientific thinking. I did my undergraduate and PhD training in molecular Biology at UW—Madison, and then I did my postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech. At age 30 I took my first job as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. I moved my lab here to Mayo Clinic in 1995. I love doing molecular biology research, and I love working with PhD students. I enjoy the vibrancy of young people, about your age, and the crucial questions and decisions and dynamic changes my students face. It is a very exciting time of life, and the chance to invest in my students as their mentor is a joy and a privilege.

I grew up in a world where evolutionary theory and an ancient earth were important scientific truths. When I became a Christian and started to carefully study the Bible, I met loving people who had decided that a high view of the Bible meant rejecting modern scientific views about the origin of our universe and the origin of humans. I temporarily jumped from one side of the fence to the other, assuming that Darwinian theories could not be correct and that I had no choice but to become a creationist or a proponent of what came to be known as Intelligent Design.

What I want to do this evening is to depart from that topic for a while, and talk about something else. I loved the history of science courses I took as an undergraduate, and tonight’s topic will start with history of science before eventually getting us back to where we started. Bear with me.

Two things motivated me to choose this evening’s topic. The first was a series of conversations I’ve had with Liz during her time so far as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. She has a number of Christian friends, and she and I have both been dismayed to hear that many of them avoid taking college courses in geology or even biology because they are afraid to be taught about evolutionary theory. The concern seems to be that even hearing about this scientific topic is somehow evil and dangerous. What an unfortunate attitude! What does this fear say about curiosity and the search for truth? Why do we go to college anyway? Isn’t it possible that there is more to learn than what we already know? Couldn't some ideas be bigger and more profound than we previously thought? I was disturbed to think that Christians are afraid to learn more about nature and science and technology. How else can we understand what really is true? Shouldn’t we listen and sift, using our minds and our God-given intellect to determine honestly for ourselves what is real? After all, college should be the one time when we get to decide what we believe (and why), so we don’t unquestioningly inherit what our parents believe. Remember, somebody’s paying a lot for you to have this college experience! So I was annoyed.

Second, I read two wonderful books this spring. I recommend both to you with great enthusiasm. You can get them from amazon.com. The first is:

Francis S. Collins. The Language of God: a scientist presents evidence for belief. Free Press, New York, NY. 2006.

This excellent book is by the molecular biologist who managed the publicly-funded human genome project to sequence, for the first time, the 3 billion base pairs of human DNA. Collins is a wonderful and thoughtful Christian believer. Like some of the Christian professors who influenced me at UW—Madison, Collins is committed to the Bible and he is not a creationist. This book is extremely helpful, and I urge all of you to read it. In fact, a section of the book gave me the idea for my talk this evening. It is called “Lessons from Galileo.”

The other book that influenced me is actually about Galileo. It is:

Dava Sobel. Galileo’s Daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith and love. Penguin Books, New York, NY. 2000.

This tremendous book collects actual letters written to the famous Italian scientist, Galileo, from his daughter in her convent. The book gave me the opportunity to review Galileo’s life, and I drew some conclusions that I wish to share this evening.

After we briefly review the historical record of Galileo’s life and scientific contributions, I want to remind us of his spiritual legacy. I’ll let you connect the dots from this discussion to the issue I mentioned at the beginning. Finally I’ll suggest some key principles drawn from the story of Galileo.

I want to emphasize that my comments this evening represent my own opinions. I will quote some famous people, but my presentation is not meant to imply that these views are officially shared by our hosts this evening, or by my church. I feel strongly about these ideas, but I feel even more strongly about other things that I know more certainly. I know more certainly that my savior Jesus Christ loves me, and died for me, and that his death has rescued me, and, amazingly, his death makes me clean in God’s eyes. We can enjoy lively debate about science and origins, but these are not nearly so important as understanding how to come into personal relationship with the God of this universe.

To understand Galileo and the momentous importance of his scientific and spiritual contributions, we need to dust off a bit of scientific history. We’ll start with Ptolemy, a Roman scientific philosopher who, around 83 AD, published his geocentric model for the solar system (and the entire universe, for that matter). The study of cosmology has much more ancient roots, but Ptolemy captured the western thought of his age: both our physical experience and our healthy egos make it clear that the earth is stationary and everything moves around us.

Duh.

This core truth is self-evident, and we just have to work out the details of predicting the movement of sun, moon and stars in celestial spheres that move around us. Those pesky planets (the “wandering stars” whose motions break the rules) were just minor exceptions to Ptolemy.

The geocentric cosmology made sense with experience and with our human perception that the universe is about us. This model was also consistent with the language used by the biblical writers (more on that in a few minutes). Ptolemy’s views held sway for almost another millennium and a half. Then things changed.

To put the matter in context, recall that the brilliant artist and scholar Leonardo da Vinci lived from 1452-1519. Shortly afterwards the equally brilliant Polish scientist, Copernicus, put into writing something that had intrigued other (less daring) western scientists for centuries—the concept of a heliocentric solar system. In fact, Arab, Greek, Indian, and likely Chinese philosophers had been toying with these ideas as well. In 1543 Copernicus argued that a heliocentric model for the solar system could account at least as well as the geocentric view for the phenomena we observe in the sky during the day and night. The sun, not the earth, might be the stationary object.

With hindsight, it is fascinating to read about how the Copernican model was viewed by his contemporaries. One of them was Martin Luther, who was busy inventing Protestantism. Luther, who lived from 1483-1546, was not a fan of Copernicus or his idea that earth orbits the sun. Luther wrote:

"There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must . . . invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth."

What else was going on in 1543? It was a busy time for science, religion, and culture. John Calvin lived from 1509-1564, and William Shakespeare from 1564-1616. They were both contemporaries of Copernicus.

Then we get to Galileo and our story for tonight. Born in the same year as Shakespeare, the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei lived from 1564-1642. More than a philosopher of science, Galileo was an observational scientist. By this I mean that he invented scientific instruments that revolutionized his ability to observe the universe. With the ability to see the universe more clearly came fresh evidence, not just opinions, about truth. It was this evidence, and the conclusions he drew from it, that got Galileo into trouble.

Galileo built a refracting telescope in 1609, when he was 46 years old. This changed everything.

Galileo used his telescope to observe the night sky. Though it wasn’t a very good instrument by modern standards, it revealed evidence that shook the Ptolemeic cosmology. Galileo observed sunspots that challenged the notion of heavenly perfection. More amazing, he observed, for the first time, that there were moons around the planet Jupiter. In a wonderfully detailed set of observations, Galileo discovered that Jupiter’s moons circled…Jupiter! Not everything in the heavens need circle the earth. Maybe our planet isn’t…gulp…the center of everything after all. Galileo’s thorough, and thoughtful, observations and writings helped to establish the Copernican view as very likely. The retrograde planetary motions are easily explained if earth and the other planets are circling the sun at different rates and on different orbits.

In a moment, we’ll review the ecclesiastical arguments that ended up costing Galileo his freedom.

In the tradition of astronomers, the next major figure was Kepler, who in 1571 (during Galileo’s life), deduced that planetary orbits are elliptical rather than circular. It was then the British genius, Isaac Newton, who in 1642 published his massive treatise laying out the laws of motion, gravitation and mechanics. By the 1700s it became plain that the heliocentric view of the solar system was correct. Modern space exploration depends on it. Moreover, our understanding of the universe made possible by observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments descended from Galileo, prove that we’ve lost our place in the center of it all. In fact, our planet is in the middle of nowhere in a solar system in the middle of nowhere within a galaxy in the middle of nowhere in an unimaginably vast and expanding universe.

In case you missed that—it appears we are in the middle of nowhere.

So we know now that Galileo was right and Ptolemy was wrong. I’m not aware of many Christian students who are afraid to take college astronomy because they might be taught that the sun is the center of the solar system. Galileo was right. The sun IS in the center of the solar system. We’ve stopped arguing about it. We accept it. We can still be Christians and yet believe in heliocentrism.

Duh.

Well not so fast. Galileo paid dearly to teach us this lesson, and it took many decades and bitter arguments with the religious leaders of his day. Let’s remember that there were Bible students in both the Roman Catholic and Protestant establishments who were committed to the view that Galileo’s teaching was heresy of the worst kind. The Catholic Church worked hard to suppress this teaching and censured Galileo. Before we’re too judgmental, remember the quote from Luther about Copernicus. Most leading Christians of the day were not leading scientists of the day.

Thoughtful Jews and Christians have, for centuries, been trying to understand how the Bible is inspired, why it was provided to us, and how to understand the many kinds of literature collected within it. Those wishing for some kind of literal interpretation of all passages struggled violently against heliocentrism. For example, I did a search that found the word “sun” 170 times in the New International Version of the Bible. 55 of those verses involve rising or setting movements. Clearly, if the sun is stationary, these verses are not literally true, right? A number of other famous verses caused particular arguments between church authorities and the new cosmologists. I will mention just seven examples:

Psalm 93:1
The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty;
the LORD is robed in majesty
and is armed with strength.
The world is firmly established;
it cannot be moved.

Psalm 96:10
Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns."
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity.

I Chron 16:30
Tremble before him, all the earth!
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.

Psalm 104:5
He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.

Ecc: 1:5
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

Josh 10:12-14
On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:
"O sun, stand still over Gibeon,
O moon, over the Valley of Aijalon."
So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on [b] its enemies,
as it is written in the Book of Jashar.
The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a man. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!

Job 9:6
He shakes the earth from its place
and makes its pillars tremble.

I think it is tremendously important to think through these seven examples. We now know with great certainty that the earth orbits the sun. We also know that the Bible is an important collection of ancient documents that somehow expresses God’s message for us. So how do we understand these passages?

Well, as we develop our own analysis, let’s look at what Galileo so eloquently said on this very point. In his letter of 1613 to churchman Benedetto Castelli Galileo writes:

“…Holy Scripture cannot err and the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. I should only have added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways…when they would base themselves always on the literal meaning of the words. For in this way not only many contradictions would be apparent, but even grave heresies and blasphemies, since then it would be necessary to give God hands and feet and eyes, and human and bodily emotions such as anger, regret, hatred, and sometimes forgetfulness of things past, and ignorance of the future…I believe the intention of Holy Writ was to persuade men of the truths necessary for salvation such as neither science nor any other means could render credible, but only the voice of the Holy Spirit. But I do not think it necessary to believe that the same God who gave us our senses, our speech, our intellect, would have us put aside the use of these, to teach us instead such things as with their help we could find out for ourselves, particularly in the case of those sciences of which there is not the smallest mention in the Scriptures; and, above all, astronomy, of which so little notice is taken that the names of none of the planets are mentioned. Surely if the intention of the sacred scribes had been to teach the people astronomy, they would not have passed over the subject so completely.”

And so we come to the crux of my presentation. I want to raise five questions for discussion:

1. Why did I choose this topic, and how does it relate to my introductory comments?

2. How do modern Christians treat/understand difficult passages that imply a stationary earth and moving heavenly bodies?

3. Why aren’t Christians fighting with scientists about geocentrism any more? Are there many Christian schools founded on the principle that geocentrism must be taught? Is that the focus of home school curricula?

4. Why aren’t Christian students afraid to take astronomy and physics in college (except if they don’t like math)?

5. What is the point?

[an extended period of discussion ensued as students responded to these questions].

OK. Thank you for your very interesting and thoughtful ideas. You have correctly discerned that I chose this topic because I think the 16th and 17th century battles over Scripture and heliocentrism teach some crucial lessons about how Christians should think about science. These “Lessons from Galileo” have totally changed how we understand our solar system and our place in the physical universe. Galileo taught us that these scientific truths need not force us to abandon Christianity. We owe Galileo huge thanks.

There is, however, remarkable irony. After just a few hundred years, many of us Christians have forgotten the lessons of Galileo. We are afraid to examine scientific evidence that might broaden our horizons, as Galileo’s evidence did. We claim a literal framework for biblical interpretation when we actually have no such framework. Galileo already demonstrated that we must think poetically about some biblical literature, including the astronomy passages of the Bible. And we have accepted this! We have already abandoned a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. As several of you stated so clearly during the discussion time, Galileo reminded us that the Bible contains many kinds of literature, intended for many purposes. This literature includes poetry, lyrics, proverbs, letters, historical accounts, allegory, mythology, and apocalyptic visions. Asking whether a Bible passage is literally true is sometimes (not always) like looking at a painting and asking if it is literally “true,” or hearing the lyrics to a love song and asking if they are literally “true.”

When Christians sign on to the creation/evolution debate, it reflects forgetfulness about the lessons of Galileo, and it also reflects forgetfulness about even more profound lessons. Let me share some remarkable quotes from deep Christian thinkers on the problem of understanding biblical teaching about origins.

Saint Augustine lived from 354-430 AD (long before Galileo). In 408 AD he wrote “The Literal Interpretation of Genesis.” Here is what he writes in Chapter 19:

“It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that the non-Christian should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.”

Augustine also writes:

“… as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.”

And finally,

"In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in many different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it."

One of my favorite Christian authors, C.S. Lewis, an expert on mythology and a deeply committed Christian, speaks eloquently about the Biblical record in this passage from his book, The problem of pain:

“For long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all of the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed in this stage for ages before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all its physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say “I” and “me,” which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past…We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state. But sooner or later they fell. Someone or something whispered that they could become as gods…They wanted some corner in the universe of which they could say to God, “This is our business, not yours.” But there is no such corner. They wanted to be nouns, but they were, and eternally must be, mere adjectives. We have no idea in what particular act, or series of acts, the self-contradictory, impossible wish found expression. For all I can see, it might have concerned the literal eating of a fruit, but the question is of no consequence.”

And so I want to leave you with four principles. I consider these to be lessons from Galileo.

1. The Bible is beautiful, not simple. The Bible contains many kinds of literature. We must work hard to understand each of them, and the purpose for which each was written. We must humbly admit that we cannot be certain about some meanings.

2. The Bible is a collection of documents revealing God’s character and relationship to us. It is apparently not a technical scientific document.

Here I would like to provide a short anecdote. Once upon a time Liz was learning about heredity, and was just starting to be curious about the birds and the bees. One day when she was about 5 years old I commented on her beautiful blue eyes, and how my eyes are also blue. Her mom’s eyes aren’t blue. Liz is smart. She looked at me and said, “how come my eyes are blue when I came out of Mom’s body?” Now that caught me off guard. Being a molecular biologist, I recognized a teachable moment. It was a perfect chance to explain the idea of DNA codes, and how the DNA instructions in my cells specified how to make blue eyes, while the DNA in mom’s cells had instructions for making gray-green eyes. I proudly steered clear of trouble while explaining some molecular biology and how children reflect hereditary information from both parents. Liz stared at me. “OK, so how did YOUR DNA get into MOM’s body!?”

Wow.

I faced a choice. She was five years old! I had no problem some years later talking with her about human sexuality in pretty thorough detail. But such a conversation in such detail would have been neither appropriate nor helpful for a little five-year-old girl with blue eyes. She wasn’t ready for it, and she wouldn’t have understood it had I provided the detail. A loving father communicates what is needed in terms that can be understood. Rather than a continued science lecture, I told my little girl that I loved her very much and I loved her mom very much. “When a mom and dad love each other, they long to have kids to share their love. So moms and dads share their DNA.” There were two seconds of silence. “OK” she said, “do you want to do a puzzle with me?”

And that was that. Why do I share this story along with principle 2? I think God gave us a beautiful story to express to us what we need to understand about our origins. A technical explanation wasn’t necessary and would not have been helpful. The beginning of Genesis is, to me, more like poetry or lyrics or a painting than a scientific manuscript. I think I was imitating God when I had that conversation on origins with my five-year-old daughter. As Bible readers, our challenge is to understand the different forms of literature we encounter, and to do our best to understand the purpose for which each was written.

3. Galileo teaches us that Christians must discern that there is poetry in scripture. When scientific observation appears to contradict the “plain teaching” of scripture, it is sometimes the “plain teaching” of scripture that is wrong.

4. By wrapping Christianity in single issues like the creation/evolution debate, or moral issues like gay rights, we diminish Christ and make it harder for unsaved people to accept him.

Thank you for your interest and for your discussion. Please don’t hesitate to email me at maher@mayo.edu with your comments and questions.

And remember, we parents love you so very much, and we are intensely proud of you!

06/08

minor prophets

I've been reading through one Bible chapter each day during my prayer time. The last few months have been in the minor prophets.

This gives one an interesting and disturbing perspective. These are the Bible chapters telling the story of the moral and spiritual failings of Israel and Judah 25 centuries ago, their corruption, their disregard for covenant law, their idolatry, their unfaithfulness, their chasing after the gods of the neighboring nations, their social exploitation, and their lack of justice.

In response, the prophets speak threats, predictions of punishments, calls to repentance, and the general message that the misbehavior of God's chosen people will be repaid with plague, famine, political disaster, and destruction at the hands of foreign armies. Israel and Judah are told that they will be decimated in a most horrific way.

I’ve been confronted by the age-old question: is this threatening and vengeful God of the Old Testament the God I know in my heart?

Today in prayer I became aware of an application that brought unexpected clarity. I realized that I am personally guilty of the same sins as the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The condemnation of the prophets applies to me for my comparable thoughts, actions and inactions.

The failure of the Jews to uphold the covenant, and the corresponding punishment, paint a picture of what God's standard demands. I am as culpable and guilty as Israel and Judah. Their national corporate sins are what I have committed and still commit. As God's chosen child, I am just as undeserving and rebellious as the targets of the prophetic writings.

The profound difference is that my punishments, my decimation, my plagues, tortures, famines, my destruction at the hands of foreign enemies—all these deserved and just calamities were executed upon my savior, Jesus, rather than upon me.

This changes everything. The messages of the prophets are no longer abstract and distant warnings to some ancient Jews with whom I have nothing in common. These are warnings and curses that remind me what I deserved, what I deserve, and what I have "coming to me" for my rebellion.

This morning I realized that the prophets were accusing me personally from the pages of scripture. I couldn’t dismiss them or claim to be innocent or victorious or living in a different age. I heard myself whispering in response, "yes, you are right—I deserve the punishments and calamities you describe—I am no better than my brothers and sisters in ancient Israel and Judah. But—by unimaginable and inexplicable mercy—Jesus has suffered these in my place."

3.1.08

chamber music in rural iowa

I started learning to play the string bass during the summer after third grade. It was 1970. Though I had expressed a preference for the violin, my parents wisely counseled that a tall young man should play a tall instrument. My dad never mentioned it, but I think he also had an affinity for the bass since he himself had played bass and tuba once upon a time.

Choosing the bass turned out to be wonderful, not so much for the visual effect, but because of the unusual versatility of the instrument. I’ve found myself playing orchestral double basses made of wood (or even fiberglass), and 4- or 5-string electric bass guitars with or without frets. Since learning to play the bass, I’ve lived in Madison, Pasadena, Omaha, and Rochester. In each city, bass playing has been an instant ticket to new friends, new venues, new musical styles, new trans-generational experiences, and new kinds of worship.

I’ve played at hundreds of rehearsals and concerts over 37 years. Some of the events were flashy: the Kennedy Center in Washington for the bicentennial in 1976, the grand opening of the Madison Civic Center, concerts with guest artists like Henry Mancini, a concerto concert solo with the Wisconsin Youth Symphony, in the pit orchestra for ballet with Rudolf Nureyev, jazz at a luxury hotel in downtown LA, side-by-side with session musicians leading worship at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, in the orchestra for “Bye Bye Birdie” at Caltech, playing with the Rochester Symphony.

Other musical memories are more colorful: dressed like an Egyptian at a musical homecoming skit in 1978, bluegrass for 5th graders with Wild Erp and the Pheasant Branch Creek Boys, youth orchestra concerts at nursing homes and prisons, praise music performed for a hostile crowd on State Street at the University of Wisconsin, rock and roll on a stage as roaches walked across the wall, in a bar behind chain link fencing, playing gay clubs in both Madison and Omaha, recording blues in a chilly studio on new year’s day in 1995.

The gift of music lessons can change a life. It changed mine. Though I’m no professional musician, I know that I was meant to play music. Worship music has become my greatest passion—I sometimes wonder if it is why I was born. Apart from my family, here is where I find the deepest joy of my life.

There is no doubt that my other favorite genre is chamber music. Perhaps my most cherished memories are of performing Handel’s Messiah. This tremendous (and lengthy) oratorio was composed in 1741. The text was written in English, capturing the essential biblical passages describing the prophetic revelation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. It is seldom played in its entirety and it is often played (and sung) pretty poorly. It doesn’t seem to matter. It is as if it is not about the performance itself, but about the privilege of sharing the power and significance of the message of the work. I’ve played Messiah dozens of times over the years, in places across the country. I love it partly because the small orchestra seldom involves more than one bassist. This player must be attentive, collaborative with a cellist or two, and willing to play with velocity and precision in both quiet and loud passages. In short, the technical challenges involved in playing string bass in Messiah are a blast.

Ironically, the transcendent aspects of Messiah have struck me most powerfully through the several performances I have played at churches in rural Midwestern towns. A combined local volunteer choir typically hires a few vocal soloists and a small orchestra for a community Messiah concert. These events were always quite remarkable. I always found myself trying to visualize the composer confronted with the spectacle.

My favorite memory of this kind was from the early 1990s when we were living in Omaha and I was playing too much music. I played in chamber music ensembles, a pop/gospel music group, and a swing band, not to mention blues with “Jacob’s Creek,” a quintet featuring Dave Barry’s brother, Sam. That winter I was hired for a holiday Messiah concert in Red Oak, Iowa in an old stone church near the small town square. The church had a labyrinth of backstage rooms and a tall traditional nave with a mixture of interior wood and stone and a tremendous echo along with a musty smell. The place had seen better days. We rehearsed the work with the choir and soloists during the afternoon. The choir members represented about six small churches from the area, and all had donned white shirts with dark pants or skirts accented by various red and green ties or sashes for visual impact (which was achieved). They were all ages and all shapes. A few could sing pretty well. Choir volunteers had produced and served a chicken dinner with cole slaw in the church basement before the concert.

A few details about this particular night are etched in my memory. It was extremely cold. To my great surprise, the church was packed 30 minutes before the concert was to begin. The audience was buzzing with excitement. Many of the pews were obviously occupied by farm families. The men wore their work clothes, including multiple layers and heavy boots. Cold winter air hung on their coats, and bits of straw and mud were visible on overalls and shoes. There were kids. There were elderly folks in wheelchairs. I wore a tuxedo and was more than a bit concerned that this earthy crowd would neither enjoy the music, have the required endurance, nor appreciate the finer points of Messiah etiquette. After all, what business did we really have forcing these aristocratic and pretentious King James verses on struggling rural farm families in this cold Iowa town?

It turned out not to matter in the least. Amidst the mingling scents of too much lady’s perfume in the choir and a bit of manure out in the pews, the concert began. The audience sat in rapt attention, from the youngest to the oldest. Aged farmers with gnarled hands leaned on canes. Care-worn and sun-browned faces watched every move. Nobody left the church to do the milking. I could see that this was a long-planned, long-anticipated event.

We eventually arrived at the “Hallelujah” chorus. It is traditional for well-read and erudite audiences to rise in hallowed (slightly pretentious) silence for this particular selection. The origin of this custom remains obscure. I had no expectation that word of this formality would ever have reached rural Iowa, especially two and a half centuries after the composition of the piece. Indeed, the audience seemed content to remain seated. Then, to my left, I eyed one particular elderly farm couple sitting on the aisle. He wore overalls and a blaze orange cap. She had an apron and sweater and had undoubtedly been cleaning up after dinner in the church basement earlier. If they’d had a pitchfork between them, they could have posed for a repainting of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” Instead, without so much as a glance at each other, they rose silently in the crowded room, standing together in anticipation of Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus. In amazement I found myself smiling. The church audience, from the youngest to the oldest, rose in solemn response to the farmer and his wife.

When I hear discussions of the universal message of Handel’s Messiah, it is this scene that always comes to my mind.


11.07

grandma's garden

My father’s mother was born in 1899. She was an unusual woman—bright, clever, funny, and frugal. She and my mother’s father were both natural teachers. I think it was those genes that made my father, brother and me into professors. Grandma was unforgettable in countless ways. She inherited and then poured her life into dogs passed to her from her grown kids. She scanned supermarket aisles for greeting card ideas, then rendered them in her own pen and pencil versions to save money at holidays and birthdays. She attended college at a time when few women sought a formal education. She taught adult Sunday school and hosted quilting bees in her farmhouse on the edge of town. She nursed elderly parents and siblings and a spouse. Grandma adored her three grandchildren. When we visited there was always a country walk or an exploration into the attic or the basement workbench or the city dump down the road. At Christmas there was an ancient tinsel tree with a floodlight that shown through a rotating filter wheel, bathing the tree sequentially in light of four different colors. In its day it must have been the height of consumer technology. There was no garbage disposal in this house. A pump and well were still just outside the side door to remind all that indoor plumbing had come along in living memory. A slop bucket stood in the kitchen, intriguing young boys and echoing back to a time when pigs were fed with table scraps.

Grandma had set up housekeeping during the Great Depression. Neither her kids nor grandchildren could quite picture what that must have been like. She was a canner. With a huge garden out back, the basement shelves were always stocked with glass jars of beets, beans and other vegetables. Garden produce was part of every meal, whether fresh radishes and lettuce in summer, or one of her signature canned sweet pickles in the depths of winter.

The garden and my grandmother were inseparable. That meant that my grandmother was a sworn and eternal enemy of rabbits. Between the dog, several layers of chicken wire fencing, and keen aim with a pellet gun, the large sunny garden behind the house was a risky place for rabbits. Fluffy cotton tails (without attached bunnies) were sometimes visible on a nearby board, as if to make a certain point to other would-be furry visitors. That garden and its devoted caretaker served food to an extended family and distant relatives for 60 years. Countless rabbits paid with their lives for a bite of leafy greens. Grandma stood her ground even when, old and tired and longing for a night of peaceful sleep, she found it hard to tend the rows in the hot sun.

Besides inheriting from grandma the desire to teach, I also inherited the visceral instinct to defend a garden against a rabbit. Our family lived for awhile in Nebraska and I installed behind our suburban home a tiny square of railroad ties to frame a miniature garden—just big enough for some squash and peppers and corn. No depth or height of plastic fencing could protect this wimpy collection of plants from the neighborhood rabbit. Early one Saturday morning I looked out through the mist and dew to see a fat rabbit sitting in the garden, eating greens as if a dessert after munching through the fencing. Something inside of me snapped. Indignant and enraged, wearing only pajamas, I burst through the back door. Flailing my arms and screaming at the top of my lungs, I sprinted toward the garden. That the unfolding scene was visible to my neighbors was of no concern to me. I reasoned that this terrorizing display would frighten the offending intruder to death. I did not reason that the dewy grass would be slippery. As I flew toward the garden in my attempt to imitate the cartoon Tasmanian devil, I was unable to stop. I fell on the wet grass and slid ten yards across the lawn, crashing into the railroad ties, damaging my knee, soaking in the wet grass, and banging my head. My performance came to a sudden conclusion. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the insult that followed the injury. The intruding rabbit, not 6 feet from me, just casually turned its head to watch, still munching.

In due time Grandma’s last little dog died. Grandma spent a few months in nursing care away from that small house in Iowa. Grandma died while I was living in California. She never met her first great-grandchild.

My travels have only twice taken me past that rural house in the two decades since. Once I found the house empty and spent a few quiet moments sitting on the back porch steps listening to the voices on the wind blowing up from the pasture. Last summer I found myself there once again. Grandma has been gone a long time. The house is rented and surrounded by cars to be fixed, old bicycles, unraked leaves. Mobile homes dot what once was the pasture. The city dump is still there. I drove slowly past on the gravel road, seeing both now and then. Dusk was falling and before my eyes the lawn and pasture were coming alive with thousands of fireflies—streaks of yellow green adorning my darkening memories.

I then became aware of something else emerging from behind trees and tufts of grass, crossing the road ahead of me and peeking around rusting cars and piles of tires. As far as the eye could see, as if finally evening the score after six decades of lost time, the landscape was covered with the shadowy forms of hundreds of them. Rabbits.


12.2.06

the visitor

The knock came softly at first. It was hard to hear, as autumn had staked its claim on the sky and the Saturday morning gusts carried dried leaves against the window. There it was again—both gentle and urgent, a tap on the glass of the storm door.

The house had a brick walk. All but the evergreens were now brown. The shrubs seemed envious of the burning bush across the lawn, but this morning even the bush was releasing its last leaves likes sparks into the cool breezes. Only embers remained among the twigs.

As the knock mingled with the calls of passing geese, she looked up from the breakfast table and stepped toward the front hall. A striking woman, she wore middle age as if considering whether to keep the outfit, or change back into youth. Her hair and her face bore timeless beauty. She and her husband were on the verge of the remarkable metamorphosis that returns two lovers to splendid terrible isolation as echoes of tiny feet and childish laughter take the form of e-mail and cell phone calls from far away. As she stepped into the hall, she couldn’t help but notice the absence of coats and scarves across the floor. Only adults now lived in this house.

Her eyes were also timeless. They flamed in a blue-green, made all the more vibrant this fall morning as sun streamed between the fast-flying clouds.

He looked up as she stepped away from the table. Her form always made him smile inside—sometimes outside. His own hair had somehow slipped to more grey than dark brown. It must have conspired against his youthfulness about the time the empty nest began to emerge in his mind. He hadn’t heard the knock.

As she came to the door, two sets of eyes watched her. One set was always watching this hall. There, inside the door, the first view of any guest, was a framed photograph of a little girl. Her smile from behind the glass never faded. Her photograph in this place of honor bore silent and wordless testimony to a time of unspeakable despair—the darkest shadow this family would ever know. The soft smiling face seemed forever peaceful, but if one listened near that magical photo, one could hear sounds that should never fall upon human ears—the shrieks of a father bowed over a small unmoving silhouette. The wrenching sobs of a mother calling to God with a soul overcome by guilt. Chirps of a heart monitor losing tempo toward an irregular rubato, eventually a steady tone—then silence.

The eyes of the little girl in the photograph watched the inhabitants of this house. Though both parents had eventually made life work, and had poured themselves into three new children, the missing first child was somehow the story of their lives. She was woven into every word, every glance, every cry, every laugh.

The sun was just over the shoulder of the visitor. She was tall and wore a beautiful English sweater, her light brown hair in a ponytail, tossed by the breeze. Her face was bright and glowing. The woman looked at the visitor through the glass—through the glass. For a moment she had the peculiar feeling that this view through the glass was how this visitor should be seen, and she hesitated before opening the door.

The visitor stood alone, a stunning beauty in the fall air. With the door open, her face was all the more amazing—both reflecting the sun, and shining itself. She looked to be in her twenties. The visitor extended a lovely hand. Instinctively the woman took it into her own, squeezing it gently as the visitor stepped into the entry. The woman did not know this person.

A leaf blew by them into the hall before the door swung shut.

“I came to say thank you.”

It was a quiet voice, perfectly matched in its golden tone to the beautiful face.

“Do I know you?” asked the woman, glancing briefly beyond the visitor to see if other guests accompanied her.

“I came to say thank you,” repeated the visitor. “That is something I tell you all the time, but I wanted to tell you now—to tell you here.”

The woman inhaled to express her confusion, but then stopped. Her breath was stolen. Even though the door was closed, the stray leaf in the hall seemed to take brief flight of its own accord. There was something about the visitor’s eyes. The woman became aware in an instant that she had been seeing these eyes for years, yet had never seen them before.

The man stepped into the hall, now aware of the tall young woman holding the hand of his wife, silently. Sun streamed across them. The door was closed but the air seemed to stir just the same.

The visitor continued—

“I came to tell you that we were in an embrace just now. We hug so often, practically all the time at home.” Her voice took on a slightly more urgent tone.

“At home we’re together often, and then I always thank you. I’ve always thought about thanking you here and now, but I never can because we’re home.”

He stepped forward to search out these peculiar words from the visitor. She held out her other hand to him. He took it, feeling the warmth and softness. The three stood now, flesh to flesh to flesh. There was a tiny rustle as the leaf again slid across the floor.

“I have so often asked him if I could come here—I especially ask when we hug at home.” There was a pause. The man and the woman stared at the visitor’s face—at her eyes of blue-green fire.

“Just now when I asked— he said I could come. We are embracing right now at home and at last he said I could come, for… a moment.” The visitor’s eyes glistened and a tear slid across her cheek.

Those eyes.

“I came to thank you…for loving me.”

Her voice suddenly was strained between sobs.

“I came to thank you for keeping my picture in your hall for these 21 years.“

There was a moment when time rushed from the room, leaving a vacuum filled only by light. The three felt themselves pulled gently together into an embrace. Each sensed the others like one feels water when swimming. The brown leaf rose, swirling in circles silently around them.

Her eyes brimming, the visitor again whispered “thank you," but this time the words seemed intended for different ears. Through the strange tears her final vision was the face of a little girl looking at her through glass from the wall.

The man and the woman stood alone, holding one another tearfully, strangely aware that it was new and old, absent for decades, yet never ended, never-ending. They buried their faces together, wordless. It was a Saturday morning in fall.

The brown leaf settled onto the hall floor. The door remained closed. They began to again perceive sounds. In each other’s arms, the visitor was gone. Again. It was just the two of them, now in a familiar isolated embrace—the embrace of lovers with three children leaving home and one forever watching from the hallway wall.

“At home we’re together often...” The words of the visitor seemed to hang in the air.

Amid the tears and familiar sounds of autumn, he noticed that something was wonderfully absent. Just in front of the glass where the little girl’s beautiful eyes watched the hallway there now remained only the sounds of wind and geese.


For John and Gretchen Steer, 10.05

her hands

Her dad always thought she had beautiful hands. When she was much younger he enjoyed holding her little hand and looking at those slender fingers—never chubby like you’d expect for a child. Her parents spent a small fortune on years of piano lessons. There were lots of tangible benefits—she learned a bit of discipline. She learned the music clefs and scales. She learned how to memorize and the surge of adrenaline when one’s mind goes blank in the middle of a recital. Her mom and dad came to notice a certain sensitivity in her playing. There would be nights after dinner when they would catch themselves listening to the dynamics she had added to the version of some film score she was perfecting on the piano. Looking back, her dad realized that beyond just listening to the maturation of this young musician, it was seeing her beautiful hands move across the keyboard that gave him the greatest joy. There was just something about those hands.

He had grown up playing the piano and then turning his attention to an instrument with four strings. It came time for her to do the same. She chose the ‘cello. There were years of string music from the living room and cold winter drives across town to lessons. The girl improved rapidly as a ‘cellist. Her mom and dad and her teacher noticed the increasing smoothness in her tone—the natural sensitivity to a musical mood—her innate instincts that drew music from the instrument. One night her dad watched her seated at the front of her section in an orchestra and he remembered the years of playing that had changed his own life in so many ways. Perhaps she was born to be a ‘cellist. Even that night, he realized, it was watching her slender fingers and the way her hand naturally curved across the strings that most enchanted him.
She turned 13, then 14, then 15. Her musical life was ever more digital—compact discs, the iPod, downloads from the iTunes music store. The bands had names her mom and dad didn’t recognize, too many with parental guidance lyric warnings on their CD cases. But there was also the discovery of music from their own youth. Who could have guessed that this tall, beautiful 15-year-old would find herself listening with her mom and dad to the Beatles, U2, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin. They could never quite figure her out. Surrounded by MP3 technology, she longed for a record player and a collection of LPs.

Her fingers learned to dance across the keyboard of her computer, composing instant messages like Mozart might have thrown ink onto music paper while his mind brought life to all the instruments of an orchestra. She could conduct digital conversations with six friends at once, her hands a blur in the dim light of the LCD screen. Her dad never tired of watching those hands.

Then came the guitar. It forged a place in her life as the piano and ‘cello quietly faded to silence. Her dad didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t the classical guitar, but a Fender Stratocaster and the required effects unit. It was spending every waking hour for an entire summer learning every riff she could pick up from John Frusciante and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The musical passion and curiosity of that summer surpassed what she had given to the years of piano and ‘cello combined. There was something about the world of tabs and power chords and funk patterns that drew her in. She drilled a hole in a Fender guitar pick and wore it as necklace. Her fingers were more beautiful than ever. When her dad had rare chances to hold her hand, he noticed that her fingertips were secretly calloused.

It was during those summer nights that her dad would bring his bass guitar into her bedroom and plug it into her amplifier—sharing the power to rattle the walls with rock music. His own path was like hers. It was, in the end, electric bass guitar that ignited his passions and absorbed his time. One night he plugged in the bass and sat on her chair. She sat on the edge of her bed. Having mastered the guitar licks of her favorite Chili Peppers song, she had learned the bass lines and now taught them to her dad. They worked together as musicians, not as father and daughter. They laughed. He tried new fingerings for the patterns she showed him. Soon they were playing along with the CD on the computer—one song over and over. Her mom slipped into the bedroom to watch. It was an early summer evening—the light growing dim outside. He looked over at his daughter. It was halfway through the song they had learned. As he followed the pattern she had taught him, he watched her face. The joy in her eyes was spilling into an unashamed smile. It was the smile of someone who was doing what they were meant to do. His eyes shifted downward just a few inches and he suddenly understood. There, flickering across the dark wood of the fretboard, gliding with magical aesthetic curves as if they had finally found their true home, were her beautiful fingers.


12.04

a vision in white

I’m not much of a runner, but at 42 I’m convinced that jogging the 4-mile nature trail near my home is good for me. I usually run alone, though sometimes the miniature dachshund trots along behind me on his leash, just far enough back to avoid being dragged. When I’m really lucky, one of my daughters will pedal along beside me on a bike, or glide along on roller blades, permitting an all-too-rare conversation. My sentences come out in fragments, punctuated by strained breaths—theirs come smoothly as they cruise along on wheels. Our trail is a spectacular loop of blacktop that snakes along a disintegrating stone fence, around a decaying farm, past fields of corn and beans that change their texture and palette with each season. We cross a historic bridge, dash beside a bubbling river, then cut between placid lakes. My wife and I didn’t know about the path when we purchased our home. It was one of those remarkable gifts discovered a few days after we moved in. I am perhaps most touched when my tall and lovely 14-year-old daughter accepts one of my running invitations. Her rollerblades elevate her nearly eye-to-eye with me. Her blond hair emerges from her helmet, flowing in the breeze. Something about a private conversation with my first child always makes the time seem important—well-spent—priceless. She’s a high school freshman. Her nights under my roof are suddenly numbered. The afternoons on the path without the demands of homework, friends, movies, are fewer and further between.

It wasn’t always that way. On a fall morning 14 years earlier in a metropolitan hospital, this bleary-eyed dad first held this girl. She was wrapped in a delivery room blanket—dark eyes peering at the bright lights. The hair that would eventually be beautiful blond started out damp and dark. I almost never talk about it, but something happened to me when I first held my first girl. I am not one who often experiences visions and touches from the transcendent world outside of time, though I know our lives are but shadows in a created swirl of bright universes. That morning as I first held my little girl, I was for a moment overwhelmed with the sense that I was standing with her at her wedding. She was tall and beautiful. She wore a long white dress. I saw her beside me in glowing white—just for a moment. Just long enough to notice something catch in my throat as I was given the future in her. For that moment she was arm-in-arm with me, and I was taking both my first and my last steps with my little girl.

This peculiar vision was renewed one summer day on the path when neither daughter was available to join me on my run. I didn’t see it coming. Like the path itself, the gift was unexpectedly given. I rounded a corner as I ran the trail, just where the green breeze-blown grasses give way to the shade of trees and fallen limbs along the path. There in the woods off to my left was a glorious shaft of sunlight spilling deep onto the floor of the forest, illuminating a small clearing. In the center of the dazzling sunbeams, glowing in magnificent white, stood a young woman. She posed in a wedding gown, frozen out of place and time, almost hovering. As I passed, expecting the vision to vanish like vapor, I perceived that she was centered in the lens of a photographer, capturing her beauty in that shaft of light for her future wedding. Her future wedding. I suddenly recognized this scene with the lovely young woman in glowing white, surrounded by shade. The picture had been etched in my mind long before. It was the same glow, the same tall beauty, the same mysterious image that had visited me on the day my first daughter was born. That glowing white dress remains ever for me the symbol of her birth, and the symbol of the day she will walk with me to be married.

Since then I have jogged past that hidden spot countless times, whether in spring with a carpet of blue flowers along the path, or in the heat of buzzing summer, or when the chill wind carries the sound of geese. With each passing, I gaze off across the woods to the clearing—half expecting to see the beautiful bride and the white dress. On very rare days I can slow to let a tall young woman with blond hair catch up to me on her roller blades. Then I reach out and gently take her hand for just a moment as we pass the spot. I release her again, watch her speed off, and something catches in my throat.


12.3.03