The Ultimate Scientist

As a joke one year, my late mother-in-law bought my father-in-law a T-shirt that said, "I am a rocket scientist." It was funny because it was true, and one of the most interesting things my father-in-law taught me was that science and God are perfectly compatible. There is no need to separate them.

I had a very hard time with science in junior high and decided I would never be any good at it. I was sure that being an artist meant I would never need it or care about it.

I wish now I'd had better teachers, because the two times I did, in high school, I did pretty well and liked what I was doing. My freshman science class teacher was funny, lively and engaging; and my junior year chemistry teacher was so good at explaining concepts I actually understood what he was saying. 

Unfortunately, other teachers were a whole lot less competent -- and I missed out on what could have been a very interesting journey, at the very least. No, I wouldn't have turned into a scientist. But my understanding of the real, physical world would have been so much better--and that would have been better for me.

I've spent too much time in doctors' offices this year, though I have to marvel at the clinical, brightly-lit world they live in, day after day. The approach they use to verify, test, heal and study is something I wish I knew more about. It is a strategic approach versus an instinctual one, while I lived my whole life using the instinctual.

When I look at climate science, though, and how research is proving over and over and over that the environment is endangered; how vaccines prevent disease; how physics and planetary studies show us the universe and how the physicality of our world comes from matter and energy, I can't help but be in awe of it.

My father in law was, too. He talked to me once about the Big Bang theory, and then asked, "How could that not make you believe in God?" As soon as he said it, I knew I agreed. So when I hear people refuting scientific evidence because it "goes against God" I just have to SMH. I can't understand how anyone can not see the design of the universe without seeing how science fits into it and explains it. 

I chose a life that's the opposite of clinical, dealing in stories and storytelling; plays, music, songs and shadows; a world of artfulness and artifice. I know this world is a complement to the clinical, scientific world and that the energy in both feed off each other. And I can't help but wonder some days if God, who I often think of as the Ultimate Playwright, is the Ultimate Scientist too.

Maybe on different days? As they say on TV somewhere, it could happen.

Eye photo: Jessica Mullen