categories

I once heard a fellow math grad student describe mathematicians as, at heart, organizers. And it’s true – we like to sort and categorize and arrange.  All of our adjectives like “continuous” or “open” or “differentiable” are categories into which we sort functions, sets, or other mathematical objects; all of our theorems are rules that we can apply to certain categories. In fact, one of the newest branches of mathematics (appropriately called “category theory“), attempts to categorize all of mathematics under a generalized abstract system.

But I suspect it’s more than mathematicians that experience this temptation to organize.  I think all of us want life to be tidy in some way. Maybe we don’t need a neat physical space, but we want our political affiliations to be clear. Or our inbox might be a mess, but the list of “who is an acceptable brunch companion” is very clearly sorted. We are all occasionally (or frequently!) guilty of trying to sort people into clearly opposing categories of “good” or “bad”, “liberal” or “conservative”, “creative” or “not-creative” and so on.  

I was reminded of this at church last week, when our pastor briefly outlined three theologies of salvation during the sermon. His point (with which I agree) is that all three have Biblical support; it is simply untenable to pick one and deny the others. Rather, if there is some truth to be found in any of them, it must lie somewhere in the middle.

It should be an obvious fact of life – people are complicated and multi-faceted persons that can’t be easily sorted into categories. But it’s easy to forget and push towards a simpler, neater system of lines and divisions.

This is why the artist is such an important member of society.  Most art wildly defies the idea that the world can be sorted into 6 colors like a bag of Skittles.  Stories require us to deal with characters who are both heroes and cowards; to realize that many happy endings come at a cost; to experience mixed motives and conflicting emotions.  Visual art challenges us to reconsider what is “beautiful” and that the world can be seen in more than one way.  Music, dance, theatre…all can make us uncomfortable and stretch our categories.  

It makes me think that all schools should have resident artists and make their students do art – otherwise we risk creating a world where everything is black and white, instead of gloriously complex and shaded.  

concept map

Is this art?

 

of bicycles and bellydance

This e.e. cummings poem, always a favorite, perfectly captures my attitude about this particular summer, my third in Vancouver:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

That last line really resonates – that this summer I have opened my eyes and ears and heart and mind to the (considerable!) beauty around me.  For me, this has come about due to two unlikely bedfellows: biking and bellydance.

Biking through Vancouver in summer can feel like pedaling through a painting, where each turn brings into view mountains, water, bridges, downtown, heritage houses, community gardens…you name it! So long as my eyes are open, I can’t stop marveling. Similarly, when I’m in bellydance class, paying attention to my body, I find myself growing in confidence and beauty, a confidence that spills over into certain faith in other people’s beauty and in the beauty of the world.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my fresh awareness of beauty has come about because of two very physical, embodied activities; in the same way that cummings’s poem rattles off tasting touching hearing seeing breathing as both the limits and means by which we know our world and our God.  It seems we have to use our whole beings (physical and mental) to know beauty, and by extension, I think, the Author of beauty.

To someone who has spent many years feeling like a disembodied mind, this insight (and experiencing it this summer) has been to my spirit like a refreshing drink; like the wild rush of coasting down a steep hill on a bike; like the strength and grace of a bellydancer’s movements.  It inspires me to participate – to be a co-creator in the beauty.

What practices do you have (or could you adopt) to experience the world as a physical, mental, *and* spiritual being?  

Both/And

During my time at Regent College, one of the collective jokes among the student body was the frequent occurrence of the phrase: “it’s not either/or, it’s both/and.”

“It’s not either science or religion, it’s both/and!”
“It’s not either a God of justice or a God of mercy, it’s both/and!”
“It’s not either reason or faith, but both/and!”

This refrain sounded through many of my classes, not as a wishy-washy pluralism, but as an honest acknowledgment that two opposites were not an adequate way to describe the beautiful complexity of the world. Instead, we live inside a space of potential paradox; it’s sometimes confusing and scary, but ultimately more real.

I bring this up because I am unabashedly a both/and(/and/and/and) person, as you could maybe tell from Jill’s introduction. One of the reasons I’m excited about writing for this blog is that I’ll be able to do lots of both/anding: living out my identities as mathematician, artist, and all-around academic dabbler by talking about math, creativity, faith, and maybe some other subjects that don’t always get a lot of shared press time.

In the spirit of Jill’s entries, here’s a closing question: are there two seemingly either/or parts of your life that could be brought together to a both/and?