Fascinating Observations

Things I hold on to.

1984 Ink line in Glycerine.
When I was 17 I visited the Physics department at Oxford University.  The lecturer gave us an illustration of how apparently random acts actually contain symmetry.  He was explaining how detailed pictures of the internal structures of the human body can be made by manipulating the H2O molecules in the human body.  H2O molecules will orientate themselves within a strong magnetic field.  The patterns of their movement can be observed.  

His illustration was brilliant.  He took a glass jar, and fitted it into a slightly bigger glass jar so that the smaller jar was able to rotate on a vertical axis within the larger jar.  He then poured transparent glycerine in between the two jars. This meant that rotating the inner jar required a great deal more force to rotate as the sticky glycerine provided friction.  The lecturer then took a syringe full of black ink and inserted it between the two jars squirting a think injectioin of ink in a vertical line into the glycerine so that it was held in the suspension.  He then began to rotate the inner jar.  The line smeared out into the glycerine.  After one rotation the line was a mess.  After two rotations it had dispersed into the mix.  It looked as if the line was gone forever.  The lecturer then stopped.  He rotated the jar the other way. Once, twice three time, suddenly a vague black shadow appeared, then came into focus, and return exactly to the point it had started. the coordinates of the particles making up that line had always been there.  Apparent chaos was actually precise order.

It lead me to the idea that randomness and order are linked.  Imagine a pointy mountain, much like a mountain a child would draw.  A football is balanced on the point of the top of the mountain.  It teeters on the pinnacle.  Eventually a slight wind, or earth tremor unbalances the ball, it rapidly bounces down the side of the mountain, ricocheting off boulders, randomly following a contorted path to the bottom.  As the mountain is a cone, it would be fair to say that the point at which the ball comes to rest at the bottom of the mountain is going to be completely random.  However, the precise path the ball has taken is completely predicable.  If I know all the forces, angles of rocks, bounce of the ball, velocity and trajectories of the movements; If I have the most amazing computer in the world, I would be able to point the the exact resting place of that ball would come to.  

1988 Dr Roth- my psychology lecturer at Bristol university told us the story that all our current understanding of the various forces that hold water molecules together would lead us to conclude that water should not be a liquid, but a gas, under normal atmospheric conditions.  However it is a liquid, so we start at this point.  I experience a living relationship with God, even though I find a number of contractions in nature to force me to question my faith.

What is a relationship?
To me relationships involve 'transactions' - giving and receiving.  For healthy relationships this usually involves 'fun', creativity, and mutuality (ie it could not happen without the other.)  This is what I experience with God (and also interestingly our rabbits.)  

Systems
I guess this has always been an interest to me.
For example Dr Crook's (1989) lecturers on Ethology of Psychology.  He explained the theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book 'Beyond Boredom and Anxiety'.  Acceleration in evolutionary developments were explained through  virtuous circles of successful iterations, much like the creation of resonance frequencies observed in singing pipes.  

I find I am very much affected by the functioning of church systems, and inter-faith systems.  
I find in my current studies, the lack of connection between different models of therapy exercises me.  Also the creation  of new terms and jargon, when simpler terms could be used seems to me to contradict the premise of the subject.