The idea that molecules have different speeds has always fascinated me. The idea that in water, vapor, air, vacuum, we'll find not only base changes and chemical reactions but different resting states and different responses is mysterious and wondrous. Some of the unexplainable sensations that are bodies gift us must have something to do with this and I like to pause sometimes and consider myself in the world, in the universe.
A teacher asks his teen students: Of the five senses, which do you derive the most pleasure from? Write me a 500-word essay. Go!
There is tittering and shifting at desks. You would think, maybe, that everyone would now be writing about touch. Touch is often thought of to be a sense that takes two. Either two people or one person and another object. Our bodies are all chock full of nerves and receptors so touch can give us a lot of information. In addition, one could argue that touch occurs when two entities make contact and so two sets of molecules collide. Are they resonating at the same note or different notes? Are they the same speed? Maybe this reflects when we connect and we miss each other.
And though touch is vital, and often admired and adored among the senses, the other sensory inputs are just as complex, intricate and enjoyable.
Think of the taste buds of a trained and talented chef. The incredible, even miraculous way they can taste a dish and tell you twenty ingredients, subtle and hidden. Think of a perfumer. They can do the same with a scent. Imagine that! A musician can pick out not just instruments but notes and changes, variants in music. The trained eye of anyone from a birder to an art critic to a crime scene investigator or blood pattern analyzer can locate the smallest details and derive volumes of information from elements many of us would never see.
I imagine God to be a master of all the senses and I even take that next step and say (as Father as Son) that Christ on Earth was also exactly such a master. Christ walked among us but He saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched like a master. He worked miracles (well, because He was God, but also) because He saw the fabric of everything in perfect detail. He saw molecules.
Suddenly He seems less like a repeated myth retold in a hundred cultures and languages, sustained by ancient time and the passing of years, and more like a very possible (divine) man who could very well appear right now in the middle of any modern city and make just the same impact as He once did.
But there's that other sense that can't be ignored. And it's this sense, the sixth sense, that I believe most of our most divine inspirations and sensation originate from. Not thought, or some arcane ability, or even instinctual insight. This sixth sense is faith.
The faith moves our molecules like none other.
We see a happy baby, a beautiful bouquet, a handsome preacher, and we have a reaction. We kiss our partner, we taste rich chocolate, we hear an aria for the first time, and we have a reaction. These feelings can be deep and incredible, weaving more banal moments of life together into something we actually want to live, but moments of faith, sensations of faith almost over-shadow life in their grandeur. They are moments that catch us completely. Our molecules move as they do at no other time.
We become incandescent with Christ.
In these rare and private moments (which can indeed happen anywhere, anytime, and, I think, are best appreciated and most sincere when *not* induced by a sermon) we resonate at a speed closer to God. We thrum with a beat closer to the fine details of all the senses. A glimpse behind the curtain of everyday life into something connected, something universal, something divine.
This is the essay that came to me in the mail from a fifteen year old I have never met. Which sense, the teacher asked, do you derive the most pleasure from? The answer was: I derive the most rewarding and the deepest pleasure from my sense of faith. Though I find pleasure more often in my other senses and I value these gifts from the world, I have found that if I look past these, or something even inside these gifts, that I find something more. A gift of faith. Clues left behind, by God, to guide me, to encourage me, and to remind me that I am made of the same stuff as the universe. I am made by God, of God, with God.
Where do you derive your pleasure? Are you seeing the divinity He leaves for us like seeds?
I think the speed of faith is so fast -- light speed fast -- that to our eyes it can actually appear to be standing still. If we just stop to look, it's easy to reach out and see it, taste it, hear it, smell it, and hold it in our hands.
