soul

I spent the afternoon of Friday, October 8, 2010, on the Mall in Washington D.C. I visited some of the places that had touched me exactly nine years ago when I wrote:

http://jim-maher.blogspot.com/2001/10/she-was-shy-little-girl.html

This visit also gave me a chance to think.

It’s strange. During this business trip I’ve been thinking about peculiar questions. I guess it is because I am a scientist and also a Christian believer.

Are souls real? What are they? Where do they come from? Where do they go? Are they locked in time or do they escape time? Do souls pre-exist?

The world’s great religions and thinkers have weighed in. If time does not forever trap existence and consciousness, then perhaps souls could exist on both sides of this life. Maybe that is where Hinduism finds itself.

I am a scientist. That means my professional life is about studying things I can reproducibly measure with tools.

I was once fascinated by my discussion with a believer who stated opposition to the potential generation of cloned human life because such cloned individuals would not have received souls from God.

Wow.

The lady feared that cloning would result in soul-less zombies.

So I’ve been thinking about it. As a scientist I believe in the extreme complexity of the human brain. The brain is built from a few chemicals, but its complexity defies our understanding.

The brain points to the important scientific concept of emergent phenomena. The concept of emergent phenomena is exemplified by an ant colony. An ant colony is sophisticated and reproduces, defends itself, migrates. An ant colony does things that individual ants do not. The complex behavior of the colony is an emergent phenomenon, greater than the sum of its parts.

The human brain is built from neurons and accessory cells. It is a complex electrical machine filled with circuits. It is (perhaps) the most complex electrical machine of its type among all living things.

Christian believers see in the human an image of God, created by God for the purpose of communication, rescue, and eventually, co-existence and intimacy. Deity has created a persistent attribute in humanity in order to love it. That persistent attribute is evidently the soul.

Given that I am built from machinery, but with the purpose of knowing God, could it be that God perceives my soul as an emergent property of my complex human brain?

A brain has its roots in neurons, but just as the study of individual ants does not prepare us for an encounter with an ant colony, so the soul exceeds the machinery of the brain.

Maybe the soul is an emergent property of the brain. Maybe the soul consists of something immaterial, unlike the brain.

Maybe the soul is to the brain as a love song is to the vocal cords. The one emerges from the other, but the one is carried in a different medium. The song conveys something unimaginably different from the muscle and stretched membranes that created it through moist oscillations.

The song travels. It echoes. It is perceived. It changes lives. It can change history. It can be recorded. It can inspire.

It embodies love.

Maybe the soul is an emergent phenomenon, an ant colony from the billions of ant-like neurons of the brain.

Maybe the soul is the song that is carried as compression waves through air molecules, arising from the vocal cords to be a pilgrim in a different world.

Maybe that is why humans are a little different. Maybe their emergent souls are uniquely God-like. Maybe their souls are songs that are, like his, mutually audible, linking created and creator as the created learns to both sing and listen.

Maybe.

Rupert

She was 16 but that didn’t mean she could hold it in. She sat by the fireplace, cuddling the small dark dog and the tears welled up in her eyes, uncontrolled. She looked up at her dad and mom who stood nearby, helpless. “But we have to do something” she sobbed, letting tears drop onto the blanketed animal.

Rupert was obviously hurt. Maybe it was something deep inside—they couldn’t see any outward damage. He was a middle-aged dog, at least in dog years, a crazy mix of miniature dachshund and miniature pinscher, mottled colors in a smooth, short coat of fur. He had two dispositions, either sweet (when he wanted to share a lap or a bed), or ferocious with raised back fur (when a neighborhood cat was seen outside). The girl loved him unconditionally. He responded the same way.

Some time in the previous few hours Rupert had injured himself. Like the girl’s middle-aged father, a middle-aged dog can’t just burst around the house with adolescent agility. Busting a sudden dance move could cause sore muscles for days. Rupert must have jumped from a high chair one time too many. Maybe nobody told him to do warm-up exercises before dashing from window to window to look for the sneaky cat.

Like all dachshunds, Rupert was a long, tubular dog, and long tubular dogs are prone to spine injuries. Something was wrong with his back. Rather than prancing and dancing around his owner’s feet, he stood stiffly, puffing out his belly to brace against the pain. He whimpered and called out a quiet yelp when she lifted him to her lap. The warmth of the fireplace made no difference.

“We can’t just sit here—we have to do something.” She repeated.

The little dog had been sired among the broken-down outbuildings of a struggling farmstead along the border of Iowa and Minnesota. It was a muddy, overgrown place. When the upper middle class buyers had visited, the picture of poverty was overwhelming. A dirty comforter was produced, crawling with a pile of puppies. Various farm cats and dogs wandered the yard. A miniature horse was tied up nearby. The buyers looked at the chosen puppy, imagining the long list of intestinal parasites to be conquered. The girl’s mom and dad had even wondered a bit about how many animal species might be represented in the genes of this dog—that miniature horse had a peculiar look in its eye.

The years had passed and now Rupert was grown and injured. Two days of vet appointments and scans set the family back a few hundred dollars, and only confirmed the diagnosis—a ruptured disc in the lower spine was putting pressure on the spinal nerves. Within a day Rupert was dragging his hind quarters rather than using his legs. He was a pitiful pile of dog, nothing like the spritely animal they knew. The future didn’t look good. A few dachshunds recover with long bed rest. Most don’t. Pain medicine would help little.

Distraught, her mom picked Rupert up from the local vet. She sat alone in the car with the broken dog and called the girl’s dad at work. The conversation was short. Now mom, like daughter, found herself unable to control her emotions. The caller lost all composure, crying into the phone, letting the tears roll down her cheeks, oblivious to others in the parking lot or the effects on makeup.

Her mom and dad knew about the other option for a small active dog that couldn’t even drag itself into the yard for its morning business. When euthanasia was mentioned in dinner discussion, the look on the girl’s face cut to the heart.

Rupert was a member of the family.

A consult at the large university veterinary center suggested one other option, but it seemed extravagantly expensive. Spinal surgery. She and her mother drove 90 miles for the consultation. She cradled the crying dog as best she could. Her college-aged sister joined them for the vet visit. The price tag had four figures. The expensive operation couldn’t ensure recovery.

There was another phone call. The three women sat with the small dog. They wanted to be extravagant. Seeing him raise his nose to new scents on the air outside the veterinary hospital seemed to convince them. The girl’s father took the call from his office, far from them, listening to the tones as the phone was passed from one woman to another. He imagined the three of them sitting in the grass with the helpless animal. He ran the expensive scenario through his mind.

Something occurred to him as he listened. It was both a sensation and an impression, and it grew more powerful in an instant. A helpless, broken animal lay suffering far away. The animal had no intrinsic value—the repair expense could not be rationally justified. Why sacrifice this kind of money for an operation with no assurance of success? What kind of life lesson would the two young women of the family take away from such a crazy and irresponsible investment?

The sensation and the impression grew. The contemplated sacrifice was a tiny picture of something unfathomably greater.

Grace.

Grace is the central concept of Christianity. Grace is the ultimate synonym for Jesus Christ himself. Grace is extravagant, sacrificial love by the perfection of deity bestowed upon objects with no value. Grace is he most worthy of worship reducing himself to the tortured sacrifice extravagantly rescuing his own enemies. Grace is the decision to love irrationally, imitating that ancient, irrational love that was nailed to a cross.

The operation was an expensive success.

The little dog soon could walk again. It wasn’t long before his prancing dance came back to him, with some uncontrolled sway in the hind quarters. The family joked about the expense of the procedure. They saw the traces of clumsiness and smiled together—knowingly.

Abstract concepts come alive when personified. The personification of grace lies at the heart of the story of Jesus Christ. If dogs will someday scamper around heaven, I am sure that one little mottled dachshund with a slightly awkward gait will often be seen waiting his turn to feel the embrace of his Master.

professionalism

Introduction to professionalism in Christian worship music

One of my greatest joys is playing pop-gospel music with a group of instrumentalists and singers who regularly lead our congregation in worship. This is extremely fulfilling from a spiritual perspective, and it is a blast. Particularly significant to me is the opportunity to play with people I deeply love, appreciate, and respect. Many of us on the musical team have been working together for more than 15 years. In some ways we’ve matured together both musically and spiritually.

This activity has led me to experience deep times of worship, often in surprising ways. I spend a number of hours alone listening to the songs, playing along with them, and then listening some more. I saturate myself with this worship music each week, whether while driving, or in my home studio, or in rehearsal, or in performance. During these private and public times I sense the meaning of the songs and their call to intimacy with God through Jesus Christ. The experience often brings me to tears. Maybe being in my late 40’s makes me more sensitive!

It has gotten to the point that I consider leading a congregation in worship music to be more about my own worship mindset than anything the congregation is doing. Maybe that seems individualistic, but it has become true and freeing for me. It is as if we worship musicians were saying:

We on this team are about to spend some very special time playing and singing as an imperfect but heartfelt gift to God. It will be a very meaningful and touching time for us. We love doing this more than anything else in life. If you want to join us, please do, but we’re going to do it whether you join us or not.

At a recent lovely retreat with worship ministry musicians we discussed opportunities to excel in worship ministry. Here are some of the things we covered together.

"Professionalism" in worship ministry

I want to share some of my ideas about “professionalism” in worship ministry. This may seem strange, since most of us are not professional musicians. Maybe it may even seem wrong to discuss professionalism in the context of church music. This isn’t a business, right? Shouldn’t we just be happy with sincere good tries and leave it at that?

I’ve been playing the bass since 1970. That’s 40 of my 49 years. Through the years I’ve done some semi-professional playing in Madison, Los Angeles, Omaha, and Rochester. I had a full-tuition music scholarship at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. I’ve been a union musician. I’ve thought more than once about how it would be to play professionally rather than being a molecular biologist. I’ve decided that I love playing so much that there is great joy in not trying to make money at it.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up trying to aim for professionalism in all I do. A professional musician makes enough money at music to live off it. That is rare. However, any musician can display professionalism, and that is what we are talking about today.

We’re going to start by watching two YouTube video clips by and about a fantastic professional studio musician, bass guitarist Nathan East. I don’t know Nathan East’s spiritual perspective, and it doesn’t matter for this discussion. He is a super musician, and much in demand. He plays beautifully. The first clip is one of his live performances with Eric Clapton in 1999 on Clapton’s heartbreaking song “Tears in heaven.” Besides the fact that the song is about the accidental death of Clapton’s little boy, watch Nathan East, and listen to his playing. I try to imitate his style every chance I get.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPOozwYA8

The second clip is Nathan East talking about professionalism and what it takes to be an “A-list” studio musician in the professional music industry. Never mind that this clip is part of a series promoting Yamaha Musical Instruments (note that beautiful white bass guitar). The fact is, what Nathan East and other professionals say in this clip is powerful. His comments convict me about all the ways I fail to show professionalism. His comments also make me long to be more professional, and to inspire professionalism in my musical team members. Listen to what Nathan East says, and listen to the comments of the producers who appear in the clip. Think about what they are saying on the subject of “professionalism.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfxYjQ9ZuSU

So now that you have these ideas in mind. Let’s talk about how this might fit into our lives as amateur worship musicians.

First off, let’s realize that professionalism in worship is not a new idea, and it is not a wrong idea. In fact, though they often stumbled into wrong-hearted and misguided rebellion (like us) the ancient Jews worshiped through organized music. This music was not spontaneous, but was rehearsed and offered by highly trained professionals using voices and dedicated instruments. Remember too that much of the book of Psalms is lyric sheets from ancient worship songbooks where the music has been lost. We learn about professional worship music in several Old Testament passages. Some examples are:

1 Chronicles 9:33
Those who were musicians, heads of Levite families, stayed in the rooms of the temple and were exempt from other duties because they were responsible for the work day and night.

2 Chronicles 5:12
All the Levites who were musicians—Asaph, Heman, Jeduthun and their sons and relatives—stood on the east side of the altar, dressed in fine linen and playing cymbals, harps and lyres. They were accompanied by 120 priests sounding trumpets.

2 Chronicles 7:6
The priests took their positions, as did the Levites with the LORD's musical instruments, which King David had made for praising the LORD and which were used when he gave thanks, saying, "His love endures forever." Opposite the Levites, the priests blew their trumpets, and all the Israelites were standing.

2 Chronicles 29:25
He stationed the Levites in the temple of the LORD with cymbals, harps and lyres in the way prescribed by David and Gad the king's seer and Nathan the prophet; this was commanded by the LORD through his prophets.

2 Chronicles 29:26
So the Levites stood ready with David's instruments, and the priests with their trumpets.

Ezra 3:10
When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the LORD, as prescribed by David king of Israel.

Psalm 68:25
In front are the singers, after them the musicians; with them are the maidens playing tambourines.

Nehemiah 11:22
The chief officer of the Levites in Jerusalem was Uzzi son of Bani, the son of Hashabiah, the son of Mattaniah, the son of Mica. Uzzi was one of Asaph's descendants, who were the singers responsible for the service of the house of God.

Nehemiah 12:8
The Levites were Jeshua, Binnui, Kadmiel, Sherebiah, Judah, and also Mattaniah, who, together with his associates, was in charge of the songs of thanksgiving.

Nehemiah 12:27
At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites were sought out from where they lived and were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres.

Interestingly, we learn essentially nothing about Christian worship music in the New Testament.

So now that we’ve thought a bit about professionalism from the perspective of a professional modern session player, and we've been reminded that the ancient Jews involved professional musicians in worship music, let’s think about the implications for us.

Before going on, I want to mention a comment that world-class Christian artist Michael Card made when we shared dinner with him before his concert at our church several years ago. He said something simple and profound:

We all bring mixed motives to our music.

He was talking about music in service of Christian life, whether as entertainment, teaching, or worship. He was honest and he was accurate. We are sinful people. Remarkably, when we give up our lives to Christ, God chooses to see only Christ in us. He sees me as pure, even as I struggle and fail in my attempts to offer meaningful gifts to him.

As Michael Card said, what brings us to make music is a complex mixture. Many of us in this business were made to be musicians and to praise God through musical creativity. We’re doing what we were made to do—what could be better? Sometimes we genuinely want to communicate with God through this medium, and lose ourselves in the process. I think those are my highest and most meaningful moments. I don’t even remember those songs when they’re done. But let's throw in some reality. We love being with our friends, we love the sounds of music, we love hearing ourselves play, we like the affirmation of others, we like the compliments of strangers. We like to feel needed or even indispensable. We like to think of ourselves as good players and singers. We enjoy performing. We are proud and arrogant (some of us more than others). Michael Card said it right: we bring mixed motives. Thankfully, God seems to graciously respond: "Let's start with that."

So here we go. I would argue that professionalism includes at least the following 12 ideas. There are a number of others, but these 12 form a core. I’ll provide my list and we can discuss them as we go along. Remember, I’m a bass guitarist. That’s both an excuse and a reality. These principles of professionalism are universal, so translate them into your own experience.

Skill
I’m sorry to start with this, but it is the most obvious. Skill doesn’t imply professionalism, but professionalism implies skill. When we seek to display professionalism in leading worship, it assumes that we are working very hard to hone our musical skills and bring excellent (and improving) musicianship to everything we do.

Quality
Here I mean dedication to getting things right and not accepting mediocrity from ourselves. I know, I know—I am offering imperfect gifts to a perfect creator. I am going to stumble. My heart is more important than my playing. All that is true, but my aspiration for both my heart and my playing is the same: quality. What we lay on the alter of our private and public worship is to be meaningful and expensive and genuine. That starts with quality. Franky Schaeffer (the son of leading 20th Century Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer) has written an entire book called Addicted to Mediocrity (1981) dedicated to the premise that Evangelical Christianity has forgotten quality and replaced it with “good intentions.” Ouch. That’s not professionalism.

Servant attitude
Isn’t it interesting how much of the Nathan East video was about attitude! Think of the quote from Lionel Richie. Do you remember it? It was something like “attitude determines altitude.” Professionalism is not about showing off or expecting accolades or looking for praise, or even playing really well. Especially in worship, professionalism is about a servant attitude, seeking to serve the other team members, and the joint musical product, as more important than one’s own playing. Making each team member feel good about their respective contribution can be a hallmark of a musical leader who displays professionalism.

Respect for the time of others
This is a big one. Respect for time is hard to understand until you have played with professional union musicians. It was an eye-opener for me. People are paid by the clock, there are prescribed breaks, and overtime costs a lot more. People come prepared, and leaders work efficiently. Before and after a professional rehearsal there is time for humor and good fun. During the rehearsal it is business. Players are silent when they are not working on a section together. The leader has the complete attention of all involved at all times. Players take notes to speed their subsequent preparation. Players arrive totally prepared, assuming they won’t have any time to re-orient to the music. They come assuming that the first time through in rehearsal needs to be tight, and might be recorded. We should act like each member of the team is making $200 an hour. How would it change our behavior if they were?

Patience
We in worship ministry often rehearse at night, after long and difficult days at school or in our other careers. We often work weekends. We are often tired or stressed. That’s life. Professionalism means the discipline of patience. Tempers are held in check. We exemplify professionalism, expect it in our team members, and do not blow the whistle when we don’t see professionalism around us. Like good parenting, professionalism is 90% setting a good example, and 10% expecting others to imitate it. If that player needs to go through the part 5 times to get it right, we do it 6 times. If the vocalists need some time to work out their harmony parts, we sit alertly and give them the time. They’re each making $200 an hour, right?

Self control
We joke all the time that professionalism means being paid for the notes you don't play, not for the notes that you do. Professionalism is about choosing the correct notes, and placing them (or singing them) in such a way that a song is complemented. Self control is also about disciplines like finding something complimentary to say about the musical gifts of your dear friend, or even the gifts of that new younger musician just sitting in for the first time.

Flexibility
This is about making one’s playing a tool in someone else’s hand. Maybe that someone else is another player with a suggestion, or maybe it is the worship leader. Flexibility means trying new things, willingly and cheerfully offering musical options, stretching to explore new and unfamiliar musical territory. It also means switching instruments or vocal parts or transposing as if the new key means being paid double! Flexibility also means choosing to sit out when one’s voice or instrumental part is not helpful. It means I smile and agree about sitting out even when it wasn’t my idea!

Listening
Professionalism means excellent musical skills, and an essential musical skill is listening. This means being constantly aware of what the other team members are doing musically. Many of us benefit from personal monitor mixers allowing us to choose which team members dominate our musical experience during rehearsal and performance. This is fantastic. I am a bassist. I listen to the drummer and my favorite singer and that’s almost all (OK, a bit of an exaggeration, but sorry guitarists and keyboardists and background singers). I’ll admit it though—it is an all-too-common experience that I study our rehearsal recordings and realize that a team member was creating an important musical statement, and I either played over it, or improvised a part that didn’t agree with it. Bad listening.

Encouragement
The Nathan East YouTube video makes the claim that professionalism means helping others to have a good time and to feel good about their musicianship. If there is one thing I’ve learned as a scientist who writes research proposals for money, it’s that people don’t create well when they are scared. People create when they are relaxed and when they trust those around them. Professionalism means passionately investing in that kind of environment. Professionalism means setting aside pride and cliquishness and making the musical process a pleasure for all involved. I fail at that way too often.

Attention to detail
Professionalism means caring about the little things and finding ways to eliminate errors and unhappy surprises. Such musicians think ahead, plan for problems, and bring plenty of experience in providing solutions. Players like this know their gear, know their limitations, and (in the Zen sense) play (or sing) “within” themselves. This means offering well-seasoned tools and practicing the discipline of treating body and vocal cords with respect and care.

Team playing, not cliquishness
Professionalism means reaching out to new team members who are less familiar. As I mentioned, some of us have known each other for many years and we have shared some of the most sensitive and personal experiences of our lives together. Some of us are married to each other! Some of us admire each other very, very much. Many of us love spending time together. This is all good, and it is all beautiful. It is only an obstacle when the bonds of friendship and love create a clique, an obstacle to giving and meeting and serving and hearing others in ministry with us.

Preparation
Last and not least, professionalism means preparation. This has been extremely important for me. Preparation is important not just because it supports all of the other aspects of professionalism, but because it has freed me to get closer to what I think worship should be. Let me explain. What I share is about me. It may not apply to you. If it challenges your thinking, good. No apologies.

As a classically-trained orchestra musician, I grew up focused on the technical act of interpreting printed orchestra music on the page. No improvisation. No memorization. No transposition. Detail-oriented technical playing is everything in this setting. That is about reading music, notes, symbols, Italian. I brought this “chart-centric” culture with me to pop music, jazz and worship. Put a chart in front of me and watch me play. This mind-set is technical, but it hindered my ability to actually experience worship as an intimate and emotional reality. My mind and heart were engaged technically, not passionately.

Bob Kauflin (involved for 30 years with the a capella Christian music group Glad) describes how members of a congregation can become stuck in this technical mindset. He calls it SDD (screen dependency disorder) or HDD (hymnal dependency disorder). As a musician, I had CDD (chart dependency disorder). I was too busy technically interpreting marks on a page to think about why the acoustic compression waves were propagating from my instrument, and whether the acoustic compression waves were expressing my love for him for whom they were created.

One of my most cherished musical partners once gently challenged me, just in passing, to get my head out of the music. “You don’t need those charts anyway” she said.

Say what?

Her passing comment changed my life. Not just my musical life, my whole life. I realized that a very large fraction of the praise and worship music we share has simple structure. I can easily internalize the chord patterns and feel them rather than read them. For me this changed everything. I deliberately now learn my worship music by listening, not by reading. Sure, when I play chamber music I’m a technician of written detail. Yes, if I were hired to record with two takes, bring the chart. When I want to make the worship genuine for myself, even as I lead others, I now choose to prepare so the music is fully internalized.

Preparation and memorization should not be about pride. They should be about getting beyond the technical to a place where my contribution is at the level that my mind is on Christ, and my emotions are engaged in communication to and about him. I look forward to this experience in both rehearsal and performance. In fact, I tear up in rehearsal, and find myself transported on Tuesday nights as often as on weekends—if I have taken time for adequate preparation.

For our worship preparation we receive a lovingly-prepared packet of charts and a demo CD in advance of rehearsal. I start work immediately listening to that disc every time I am in my car, and every spare hour at home in my studio. I digitally input the music into an inexpensive transposition tool:

http://www.ronimusic.com/

(yes...there is a PC version too)

that allows me to play along with the recording and work out my part and memorize the structure in the appropriate transposition over several days of intense playing prior to rehearsal. Yes, you heard me correctly, I said “several days of intense playing prior to rehearsal.” For me, that is preparation. When I arrive at rehearsal, professionalism means that I expect everyone has done the same. There should be nobody saying “I didn’t have time to study the CD” or “can you play the CD once so I can remember this next song?” We all should have been living each of these songs for the days leading up to rehearsal.

I was intrigued to discover that this freedom I have experienced through worship music preparation has a parallel in the writings of C.S. Lewis, the wonderful Christian apologist. Lewis wrote in Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer:

Novelty, simply as such, can have only an entertainment value….church goers don't go to be entertained. They go to use the service, or if you prefer, to enact it.

Every service is a structure of acts and words through which we receive a sacrament, or repent, or supplicate, or adore. And it enables us to do these things best...when, through familiarity, we don't have to think about it. As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don't notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.

Interesting. For me, memorization and familiarity and preparation are aspects of professionalism that get me beyond thinking about the dance steps. They get me to dancing. More important, they allow me to think about and actually enjoy my partner in the dance during worship.

So I cannot emphasize enough the freedom and significance that have come with my attention to the discipline of musical preparation and memorization. It has changed everything. Yes, this commitment requires a lot of time each week. It is a meaningful investment that has had a profound and very personal spiritual impact for me. It may not be for everyone. This commitment to preparation may take different forms for different singers and instrumentalists. At the bottom, however, professionalism can probably be summarized best by that single word: preparation.

Summary
So there we have them: 12 principles that capture aspects of professionalism in Christian worship music. Are there more concepts that might be added? Sure—things like passion, intentionality, humor, modesty, sacrifice, consistency, accountability, mentorship, etc. etc. They start to sound like discipleship terms, don’t they?

I think these 12 provide a good start. Let’s continue to discuss them together. Let’s continue to challenge ourselves to practice these principles and display them. Let’s agree to expect them in each other and remind each other when we stumble. Please remind me.

Oh, and did I mention, I love serving him with you. It is my favorite thing. It is a privilege.

A Christian molecular biologist answers questions about Easter and the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

What scientific problems are physicists trying to resolve through the experiments at CERN?

First off, I’m a PhD molecular biologist who studies DNA and RNA molecules. Even though the molecules I study are microscopically small, they are still millions of times larger than what particle physicists study. I’m still delighted to take part in this discussion, since I think Christian believers should be fascinated with all kinds of scientific problems The LHC is a 17-mile circular tunnel, 500 feet underground, located near Geneva, Switzerland. It will generate a staggering 15 million gigabytes of data per year (you think YOU have computer storage issues!). Particle physicists are curious about how matter and energy are organized at the smallest level. What are the “building blocks” of the universe? Aristotle taught that the building blocks were earth, air, fire and water. Many of us were taught the philosophy of the Greek writer Democritus, that the building blocks are called atoms. Now we know that even atoms appear to be built from smaller pieces, like protons and neutrons and electrons. These little pieces are too small to see, and seem to obey rules that are very different from our experiences. Are the sub-atomic particles made of even smaller things? The current popular theory among physicists is a complicated theory called the “standard model.” According to this model, even the sub-atomic particles are made of other even smaller particles, called quarks, that can form clusters called Hadrons. Particle physicists are trying to get a list of all the subatomic particles, figure out how they behave, and test the “standard model.” If predictions of the “standard model” aren’t observed in experiments, it might be wrong and physicists may need to go back to the drawing board. The LHC is the biggest single science experiment ever undertaken. CERN is a group of participating European countries (with collaborators from other countries like the U.S.) that invested $10B to build this amazing machine. That is a big investment for one experimental tool, but it is an amazing tool. And remember, we in the U.S. spent $1billion EACH for the 20 B-2 stealth bombers we have in our air force!

What are they able to accomplish with the CERN apparatus that has been inaccessible to us in the past?

The LHC on the border of France and Switzerland is the ultimate high energy particle smasher, able to generate collisions with energies 100,000 times hotter than the sun. The idea of a particle smasher (actually a particle accelerator) is that we learn about what is inside something by smashing it to smithereens and watching the pieces fly off from the collision. That seems crude, but we could learn a lot about the components of cars by crashing two cars together at high speed and photographing the pieces that fly off in different directions. The LHC is capable of smashing protons (lots of protons) together with more energy than any previous machine. The LHC cameras (called “detectors”) that watch the pieces fly apart are the largest and most sensitive ever made, weighing thousands of tons. Ultimately the LHC was built to try to detect a particular theoretical particle that is important in the standard model. This important particle is called the Higgs boson (I’m not making this up.) A better understanding of this particle would help physicists understand why matter has mass, where is the mass in the universe, and how gravity works. Interestingly, physicists believe that the force of gravity is weaker than expected from theory. Some physicists believe there are more dimensions in the universe than the three dimensions (and the fourth dimension, time) that we experience. They believe gravity seems weak in our world because it is shared with some of these extra dimensions. That is a very cool idea.

How might the data be used to help us understand the origins of life and either prove or disprove the existence of God?

The results from the LHC will teach particle physicists whether they are on the right track in their theories, or if they need to go back to the drawing board. We will learn what kind of power and energy are needed to create and sustain the universe. I suspect that faithful physicists will find the result to inspire awe in the power and magnificence of their creator. I suspect that agnostic or atheist physicists will probably not become religious believers simply because of this work. My experience is that we tend to view the universe through the eyes of faith or the eyes of doubt. At their core, though, these experiments will help us better understand the truth about our world.

How might a Christian scientist resolve the newly acquired data with the data from scripture that tells us that “By him were all things made and in him all things consist”?

I think this is the most important question. I believe that God “speaks” to us in many wonderfully different languages. He has revealed himself in ways through the rich and complex different forms of literature collected in the Bible in the biblical languages of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. But God speaks to us in many other ways. He speaks through his spirit and through his people. Remember, God also speaks through his creation. The world around us teaches us about God’s creativity. The fabric of the universe is God’s fabric. Human curiosity is evidently an aspect of God’s image in us. When astronomers use telescopes to look back in time toward the Big Bang, or particle physicists look at the tiniest fragments of matter and energy, they are reading God’s word in a different kind of language. Francis Collins worked to sequence the entire genome, and has written that studying DNA is, to him, studying a language of God. Physicists are learning that God’s language is even more weird and complex than they had thought. The amazing truth is that God’s language appears to be mathematics. Christians should not be threatened by the discoveries of science. These discoveries will also help us to better appreciate the poetry and mystery of the Bible. If the discoveries are true, they will stand up to the test of time, and they will teach us about the many ways that God is speaking to the universe he loves. In fact, there are scientists who think there may be many, many universes. I imagine that God loves them all. Maybe not all of them are fallen and need redemption, but I believe God loves to rescue fallen and undeserving things, just like he rescued me. He is willing to sacrifice himself to make this point. Perhaps God is redeeming many different universes. What is most remarkable to me is that this unfathomably awesome and powerful God cares about a galaxy in the middle of nowhere in this universe, and a solar system in the middle of nowhere in that galaxy, and a small planet in that solar system. He cares about a race of beings on that planet, and he cares with unimaginable and individual love. He cares about you and he cares about me, and he knows us both. He has purchased us with his love, in spite of our rebellion. Our God is a God of extreme power and extreme love.

Does this have anything to do with Easter?

Easter and the Resurrection may seem far removed from the studies of particle physics. Maybe they are not. Physics teaches us that the creator must have unimaginably immense power, and the ability to interconvert matter and energy. According to Einstein (E=mc^2) making matter from energy can be done, but it is extremely expensive. Amazingly, all the matter of the universe was created from energy by God at the Big Bang. Moreover, it may be that our God is the Lord of multiple dimensions. The kingdom of heaven may be among us now, but in a dimension we don’t experience (yet). Our Lord may be a Lord of multiple universes! To such a God, resurrection and the death of death seem small obstacles. Indeed they may be the rule rather than the exception.

As I scientist, I see my curiosity as a reflection of who God made me to be. Understanding God’s world means understanding God a little better. For those interested in more about the LHC, a fun (musical) rap video was created by a young female scientist at CERN. It’s been watched almost 6 million times on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojtM

concentric circles

One of the fun things about being a professor is organizing student groups of one kind or another. One of our groups meets in order to provide extra opportunities for practicing written and discussion skills. These are important tools for scientists, so one can scarcely get enough practice.

This particular student group is always fun. We meet weekly. The faces change from year to year, but the discussions stay interesting. Every group is a bit different.

One of the fun projects assigns groups of three students to lead discussions on topics of current interest that cannot be about laboratory science (since that is what the rest of the program is about). Instead, the topics are to be current events, or ethics, or controversial issues. The goal is to present ideas about which people care deeply, and then to lead a thoughtful discussion that values all the opinions in the room without letting tempers or disrespect obscure the communication. It is fun. Sometimes it is challenging. I always enjoy it, and the students find the change of pace to be refreshing. This kind of discussion is all too uncommon during graduate school training, where 99.9% of the focus is on intense scientific experimentation.

The discussion topics tend to range far and wide. We’ve talked about piracy off of Somalia. We’ve talked about HIV, health disparities, conspiracy theories, the end of the world, religious views of origins, Facebook, and many more.

One of the things I find fascinating is how quickly the topics almost inevitably become discussions of spirituality and faith, seemingly regardless of the original subject matter. These core issues seem to be just below the surface for many students. It’s not like we are going to steer clear of religion. It finds a way of honestly bubbling to the surface once we let passionate discussions expand beyond science.

That fascinates me.

I also always get the nagging feeling that I should find extra-curricular ways to facilitate these conversations more broadly among students. Some are agnostics or atheists, but many adhere to strong faith traditions. I think these are worth exploring, even challenging. I feel that way partly because of my conviction that not all traditions are legitimate, not all are created equal, and many may be, as C.S. Lewis might put it, “echoes” of the one Truth.

A few weeks ago the students led a discussion of the 2010 earthquake disaster in Haiti. It was another interesting topic, especially for affluent American students. On the other hand, several in the room came from developing countries, and some had specific links to the devastated island. We were faced with the uncomfortable issue of how to choose whom in this world to help. With so many in need, and the media making the disparities so much more obvious than ever before, what are we to do? How do we “rank” the calls for help around us?

Great questions.

We listened to each other work through the challenge in discussion. The students had done some significant thinking about this. Most had developed some kind of philosophy of charity. As we talked, a sort of consensus began to emerge. It seemed to be about concentric circles. In essence, many expressed that we first take care of ourselves, then our “own” (our immediate family), then our extended family, then our immediate community, then…

The concentric circle model makes sense. We are in the very center, where we belong. Right? This life is essentially about us, right? After taking care of #1, who then better deserves our help than our parents, brothers and sisters?

We discussed how this model makes evolutionary sense, with our genes watching out for themselves. Protecting our DNA, and the DNA most like our own (mom, dad, sis, bro) sounds like a great survival advantage that should be a selectable genetic trait.

Settled.

But then we talked some more. We began to reflect on the admiration that societies hold for those that reject concentric circles and step right out of the center. We talked with a degree of reverence about Mother Teresa, and the martyrs and those who forsake comfort and health to bring resources or a saving message to distant strangers whose genes are as different as they could be.

A fable told by Catholic priest Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) came to my mind. The story is available online and isn’t hard to find by Googling.

Once there was a very old man who used to meditate early every morning under a large tree on the bank of the Ganges River in India. One morning, having finished his meditation, the old man opened his eyes and saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the strong current of the river. As the scorpion was pulled close to the tree, it got caught in the long tree roots that branched out far into the river. The scorpion struggled frantically to free itself but got more and more entangled in the complex network of the tree roots.

When the old man saw this, he immediately stretched himself onto the extended roots and reached out to rescue the drowning scorpion. But as soon as he touched it, the animal jerked and stung him wildly. Instinctively, the man withdrew his hand, but then, after having regained his balance, he once again stretched himself out along the roots to save the agonized scorpion. But every time the old man came within reach, the scorpion stung him so badly with its poisonous tail that his hands became swollen and bloody and his face distorted by pain.

At that moment, a passerby saw the old man stretched out on the roots struggling with the scorpion and shouted: "Hey, stupid old man. What's wrong with you? Only a fool risks his life for the sake of an ugly, useless creature. Don't you know that you may kill yourself to save that ungrateful animal?"

Slowly the old man turned his head, and looking calmly in the stranger's eyes, he said: "Friend, because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting, why should I give up my own nature to save?"

This piece seems to provide the most extravagant possible example of getting out of the center of the concentric circles. Is it possible that a person would sacrifice themself even for an animal—even for a scorpion—even for a scorpion that is viciously and mindlessly stinging in response to the saving gesture? Could humanity ever really jump that far out of the center of the concentric circles?

More importantly, why do our hearts admire the old man in this fable? What is it in us that reveres and longs to imitate this selflessness. Even though our minds reason us into concentric circles, something (and it isn’t our DNA) tells our hearts that serving strangers and saving stinging scorpions is what we were really made to do.

It fascinates me that we are wired to admire this non-concentric behavior.

Then it occurred to me that Nouwen’s story actually has nothing to do with scorpions or old men, and it is not a fable designed to guilt us into selflessness. It is not about trying to get us out of the center of our concentric circles. Nouwen is reminding us gently that there is a reason we all are wired to long for non-concentric lives.

This is because the loveliest story that has ever been told is about the ultimate non-concentric life. We are built to adore this story. It is about the loveliest heart that can ever have existed giving up everything for the most vicious stinging scorpion imaginable. It is about God taking upon himself humanity in order to experience the pain, hopelessness and meaninglessness that only humans could create for themselves. In this humanity, this loveliest heart saturates himself with the human experience of suffering. In this humanity, taking upon himself the excruciating (literally “torment of the cross”) pain, he willingly experiences torture and sacrificial death where no tug of DNA can be blamed.

This is a death as far from the center of concentric circles as any being could ever get. This is the one with the most to lose giving it up for the one with the most to gain. This is the story that echoes in every fairy tale with a happy ending. It is the story our hearts were wired to hear.

I try to resist turning our discussion groups into sermon platforms. I like to see how the students thoughtfully come to tough conclusions on their own. Sometimes this leads to very important one-on-one chats later in my office.

I only said to the group, “Could it be that the reason those whose non-concentric lives are so touching to us is because they point us to a deeper and more ancient story? We long for that story but seem to have forgotten it.”

It is a fun discussion group.

3/10

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