Field Notes - May 2026
A thought
Your starting place often determines your perspective.
If you are in physics, you see order, predictability, and mathematical precision , and thus, a universe that is structured.
If you are in biology, you see difference and variation, and thus, a world of change and instability.
But, consider the paradox of solids.
Everything we touch is made up of atoms. Atoms linked into increasingly complex structures, but atoms still. And to us, they feel solid and firm.
But scale a proton of an individual atom to the size of a pinhead. At that size, the total diameter of the atom would be 200 meters.
Hence the paradox - every solid we touch is largely composed of empty space. Form and void in one.
Perspectives must be cautiously considered, especially when they seem to easily describe why something is the way it is. Perhaps the contrary is the correct perspective? Or perhaps it’s both, at once.
A quote
“Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar
A book I’m reading
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
A bestseller nearly 30 years ago, this was interesting overall, with a handful of chapters of deep profundity.
“Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota.”