Tag Archives: chaos theory

A Flapping of Wings

In the past century or so, Americans’ awareness of the world beyond our small communities grew as we fought in two world wars and endured the Cold War. Events opened our eyes to nations far beyond North America. The internet now overwhelms us with news of the world’s gigantic problems: ethnic warfare, global warming, pandemic, and Russia’s attempts to take over Ukraine.

Our own lack of power tempts us to give up. In a Facebook post, the writer Anne Lamott addresses this feeling of helplessness. She touches on the “butterfly effect”: the theory that big changes can begin with small changes: growth toward a hurricane set in motion with the flapping of wings by a small butterfly.

“Well, how does us appreciating spring help the people of Ukraine? If we believe in chaos theory, and the butterfly effect, that the flapping of a Monarch’s wings near my home can lead to a weather change in Tokyo, then maybe noticing beauty—flapping our wings with amazement—changes things in ways we cannot begin to imagine. It means goodness is quantum. Even to help the small world helps. Even prayer, which seems to do nothing. Everything is connected.” (Anne Lamott, in a Facebook post 4/5/22)

We still have the same callings as our ancestors. We are called to serve through the little and small ways given to us. We do the next thing. We shower the world with our own tiny bits of service and prayer and perhaps become part of a greater and better whole.

The Joys of How and Why

A washing machine cleans clothes by the actions of the soap, water, agitator, spin, and other mechanical features. (The how.) An engineer wishing to invent a better machine or a householder looking for a newer model may profitably study these features. The ultimate reason that the machine cleans clothes, however, is because someone wants clean clothes, loads dirty clothes and soap into the machine, and turns it on. (The why.)

A computer math course taught me that we can have other number systems than the one based on ten. Computer systems, at least when I was studying them, are based on the binary system, the on/off properties of two. You go on up to four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, and so on. Presumably you can have a system based on threes or thirteens or three thousand and sevens, if you want to. In other words, the possibilities are endless.

A previous blog discussed systems that we, as yet, have no way to predict. The usual example given is the weather, which we still can’t accurately predict beyond two or three days.(In the Puget Sound region, even the prediction of a few hours can be in error.) The author theorized that these systems we can’t predict aren’t really chaotic, but we lack the knowledge to unlock them. And when we answer one question, we find a thousand more waiting.

The universe amazes us with its complexity. Humankind is equally marvelous. The study of both leaves us in awe and provides useful knowledge, but the ultimate why for these marvelous works is beyond science. That journey begins with faith that sends us in another direction.

Logic and Feeding Multitudes

We can’t even predict the weather accurately beyond a few days. The logical world we know as manageable by our current knowledge—math, physics, and so on—represents only a tiny part of the universe, according to something called chaos theory.

But chaos, so I understand, is not really chaos. It’s part of an order we don’t yet understand, like how to predict the weather.

That’s the way I look at Jesus’ teachings. They sometimes seem against our known wisdom. Giving up to have. Serving instead of accumulating. Putting our trust in what we cannot see rather than in this world’s material objects.

I see Jesus’ miracles in a new way, like the feeding of the five thousand. The disciples studied the crowd and wondered how they were going to feed the people, far from homes and fast food restaurants.

Jesus asked them what they should do.

They answered within the context of the world they knew. The money they had wouldn’t buy what they needed, even if they could find something to buy. They had the lunch a small boy had offered, but how ridiculous to think that could do anything.

Jesus had something else in mind. No one went away hungry.

Surely God knows of powers and systems, of universes and infinities for which we have no inkling.