{"id":8175,"date":"2014-03-31T14:09:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T18:09:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/?p=8175"},"modified":"2014-03-31T14:09:14","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T18:09:14","slug":"random-and-more-random","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2014\/03\/random-and-more-random.html","title":{"rendered":"random and more random"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"random\"<\/a>
Google image, colour added by author<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today is one of those days when I don’t think. Really (and don’t tell me you don’t have those days). It was all I could do figure out breakfast (cappuccino and left-over chicken; don’t judge me).<\/p>\n

So today’s post is totally random — and really? That’s perfect beginner’s heart, if you consider: how one thing links to another, the way my teacher reminded me that we are all part of everything. Even physics says this: molecules don’t have a precise threshold, a line over which they cannot cross. It’s just that the molecular line is soooo much smaller; we can’t see it. But it’s still ‘blurry,’ for lack of a better word. My atoms bounce out into the air, and the atoms that make up air bounce into me. On a verrry tiny level. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"spider<\/a>
courtesy National Geographic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And everyone who ever breathed in and out is still here, as well. My dearly and deeply missed old ladies, my parents. Gandhi and St. Francis and the Buddha. Beth who was in a class I taught, and killed herself. An unknown woman from the Middle Ages, who died in a smoke-filled hut at 18, in childbirth.<\/p>\n

Extinct birds and mammals and even the dinosaurs — all of them still present, on an elemental scale, in the very air I breathe. Part of the random (but unique!) collection of atoms and molecules that comprise each of us. We are as connected — each animate and inanimate piece, forever — as my thumb and fingers. Ostensibly independent, but irretrievably part of a whole.<\/p>\n

\"rust\"<\/a>
courtesy Google<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So for me, the most random of images (but also — paradoxically — the least) is that of the web I believe connects everyone to everything to everytime. As random as a man lost in the Fukishima tsunami, who finally melted into the ocean, and then the droplets of seawater swept up into the wind,\u00a0 dropped as rain on Oklahoma. But also as connected as a story of one life makes that life to my own. As connected as iron (Fe) and oxygen (O): rust (FeO). When the iron and the air connect, they marry — into that lovely colour, rust. Visible connection.<\/p>\n

I know — it’s a stretch of physics (my husband reminds me of this when I go all metaphorical), but it’s my world view. \ud83d\ude42 And on a day when it started off looking like rain, and hatched into blue skies and birds singing, it suits me just fine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is one of those days when I don’t think. Really (and don’t tell me you don’t have those days). It was all I could do figure out breakfast (cappuccino and left-over chicken; don’t judge me). So today’s post is totally random — and really? 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