Important questions on my mind

What ice cream will you prefer?
What Soul music CLASSIC will we dance to together?
What music will you love as a teenager that I definitely will NOT?
Will you like Math or Science? Or both?
What will be your favorite book when you are 4? 14? 24? 34? 44? 54? 64? 74? 84? 94?
Will there still be cars, politicians and ice cream in 2118 when you are 94?
Will you go bird watching with me? (That's an open invitation!)
What will be your favorite animal?
Your favorite stuffed animal?
What animal does THAT cloud look like?

Ultrasonics

Hello, Beauty.

This is one of the many images created by a strange machine you and your mother were exposed to for over an hour.

Science is a strange thing. Some people develop a certainty about science and technology that True Believers used to reserve for God and religion.

We're so naturally inquisitive but also (I think) sometimes a bit too eager to seek certainty in all things.  In fact, sometimes we grab at it like straws that might hold us. Sometimes it's difficult for the technically-minded to admit their own lack of knowledge.

Take the young (as yet unlicensed) technician the hospital allowed to perform the ultrasound.

After half an hour of running the ultrasonic wand around your mother's gooey belly and after poking at mom to get you to move so the technician could get the photo's SHE wanted, I started getting aggravated. (I'm hoping to work on this unflattering quality over the next few months before you get here.) Watching her bounce the plastic against your mother's belly, I began to wonder if there might be some effects of the jostling OR the ultrasound itself.

So I asked the technician if you could hear any of this. (I should explain that I was wondering if even at levels that are ULTRA (or above) our terrestrial hearing, if perhaps in the amniotic fluid in which you currently swim, if perhaps, the ultrasound might be received by your developing ears differently. You're sort of like a fabulous sea creature right now!)

The technician looked at me with the bemused patience of most technicians who don't like people questioning what they're doing. (Especially while they're DOing it!) "Oh, no," she said, "ultrasound means that it's outside our range of hearing. And the baby's too."

Having read articles about the possible effects on whales and dolphins (some people believe that ultrasonic frequencies used by submarines and the defense industry can disorient these sea creatures who can pick up those signals and cause them to become disoriented and become stranded on shore (some even think it causes bleeding in the brain)), I wasn't completely convinced. (By the time you get around to reading this; that last statement probably won't surprise you.)

But here is what I found from New Scientist magazine from more than decade ago:

Ultrasound examinations during pregnancy expose the fetus to a sound as loud as that made by a subway train coming into a station, say US researchers. But doctors do not think the experience causes a baby any lasting harm.

Neither adults nor fetuses can hear ultrasound waves because they vibrate at too high a frequency for our ears to detect them. But James Greenleaf, Paul Ogburn and Mostafa Fatemi of the Mayo Foundation in Rochester, Minnesota, investigated the possibility that ultrasound could cause secondary vibrations in a woman's uterus.

Ultrasound machines generate sound waves in pulses lasting less than one ten thousandth of a second. Pulses are used because a continuous soundwave could generate too much heat in the tissue being examined. The Mayo team predicted that the pulsing would translate into a "tapping" effect.

They listened in by placing a tiny hydrophone inside a woman's uterus while she was undergoing an ultrasound examination. Sure enough, they picked up a hum at around the frequency of the tapping generated when the ultrasound is switched on or off. The sound was similar to the highest notes on a piano.

Theoretical consequences

When the ultrasound probe pointed right at the hydrophone, it registered 100 decibels, as loud as a subway train coming into a station. "It's fairly loud if the probe is aimed right at the ear of the fetus," says Greenleaf.

Fredic Frigoletto, chief of maternal fetal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, says doctors should be careful not to point the ultrasound probe directly at a fetus's ear unless there is a particular reason to suspect facial or cranial abnormalities. "Then the benefits significantly outweigh any theoretical consequences," he says.

Fatemi presented the team's research at the annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Perhaps by the time you are born, we'll have learned more about this, but I doubt it.

And long after you're born, I think there will be people like this young technician who believe anything they've been told.

My hope for you is that you develop a healthy skepticism. Not frozen by indecision or fear in moving forward with smart thinking, but open to inquiry. The history of human beings is filled with those who would question what they've been taught and are able to discover some new idea or way of thinking.

For the moment, I think we'll think a bit more about how often you have to listen to those subway trains when you're in your mother's womb.

A Whale of a Tale of a Whale's Tail

     "It's Hook!" the men around the boat began to shout.
     Your mother and I were standing at the front of the boat watching the blue whale rise, exhale a plume of mist into the air and then dive for deeper water. (Whales do this, ride along the surface of the water so you can see their backs rise and fall three or four times and then you will see their back slides along the surface of the water -- the blue whale is the largest animal on the planet so the back can seem to go on FOREVER -- and then at the end as the dive deep, their tale will flick up.
     In this case, that curve was how they recognize the whale they called "Hook".
     The men were giddy to recognize the telltale curve (on the left in the photo) of one side of the whale's tale. They were unsure if the fluke had been bitten when the whale was young or had just grown misshapen, but they recognized the whale by his tail. (In either event, they said, the whale had learned how to swim a little different from other whales since the fluke helps propel the whale forward.)
     Because whales live under the surface of the ocean this is one of the only ways to get to recognize them. (Unless you spent time swimming under water with them, because they aren't likely to come out to go for a walk with you on land. (And I'm sure they mean no offense by this.))
     And I was thinking about the ways we get to know each other, we humans, that is. We can go for days and days without seeing relatives we love. Or friends. We don't always know when they'll pop to the surface and sometimes when we call to them, it may take a while to hear any call back.
     How much do we know of each other then? How much of us will remain out of sight to our parents, to friends, to coworkers?
    Perhaps the best thing we can do -- and this is an awfully difficult thing to do for blue whales because they are so big and it takes so much energy for them to get ABOVE water -- perhaps the best thing we can do is do our best to leap out of the water sometimes, show ourselves, no matter how shy or afraid of ridicule we might feel.
     While I think we often spend our lives living just below the surface the way these blue whales your mother and I saw, I think there is something fantastic and beautiful if we can do our best to swim deep and get a great running start and show the world who we really are.

Dear Long-Distance Swimmer,

It has been too many days since I have posted here.... Your mother and I have been traveling in California seeing your great-grandparents and hearing more about the family history.

And in one morning trip, we went to a harbor near Newport Beach where we set out on a whale watching trip.

Along the way, we encountered a school of what they call "common dolphins". They call them common dolphins, as opposed to the bottlenosed dolphin or the striped dolphin or the pantropical spotted dolphin or the Atlantic hump-backed dolphin, because they are so numerous.

This struck me as very lazy. Dolphins, staring up at us from their watery world, would be completely right to call us "common humans" -- but we would very likely be indignant that they are missing some unique quality of us. The chestnut-haired human, the likely-to-fall-asleep-during-movies human, the anxious human...

Riding at the front of this boat was a netting that stretched out between the hulls of the catamaran (each of which was fashioned with "viewing pods" to view dolphins underwater... although a touch too-claustrophobic for your mother (though I did remind her that your own non-viewing pod right now may feel a bit claustrophobic at times.)) From here, your mother was able to capture this shot of a mother and child just five feet away from her, riding together swiftly along the top of the water in front of the boat.

The entire way, the baby kept pace with the mother. Or was it vice versa? In any event, it made me think of you swimming alongside your own mother right now.

En-thu-siasm

Dear Distant Light,

By the time you read this, you'll probably have learned, shared or become annoyed with my various enthusiasms. (At the moment, for example, I am reading everything that has been translated into English from the Brazilian writer, Clarice Lispector.)

En-thu-siasm is one of those wonderful words that contains so much in five syllables: God-filled or possessed by God. En/inside; Theo/God; asm,ism/state of, condition of.

Something for which we are enthusiastic is then something in which we find God, which is God-filled.

But how do we distinguish among fantasies, addictions and enthusiasms? I'm not sure that's something the brain can always figure out; I think you need your heart to truly understand. (This brain thing can be awfully greedy and rationalize an awful lot of things that are NOT good for your heart.)

When I was in Argentina, I was impressed with how many people there express their passions publicly. (Here in the U.S. we tend to hold them in and sometimes that causes them to get twisted up a bit.) Finding our En-thu-siasms is about going out and looking for God in the world and sometimes you can find it in the sculpture in a cemetery for a loved one who has passed:

Or in a dance, like the tango (because in Argentina they literally have footsteps built into the sidewalk.)

Or in the artwork painted on buildings on the street.

Clarice Lispector wrote:
"The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence."

So listen close.

The way you listen to your mother's heartbeat right now. That is how we live in God.

Sunday Thoughts: St. Francis Prayer

The story goes that the "Prayer of St. Francis" was actually not written by the man in the 13th century who loved animals and served the poor.

As near as anyone can tell, the earliest record of the prayer is from the TWENTIETH century, when it was published in a small religious magazine in France called La Clochette (The Bell). An English translation was later published in a Quaker magazine and attributed to St. Francis of Assisi.

During and immediately after the Second World War, the prayer was distributed to millions of people.

That's okay. For me, that doesn't make the prayer one bit less important:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. 

Amen

Listen close

The sun roars during the daytime.
It may be hard to hear softer noises, gentler voices.
At night, listen close.

You can hear the voice of things you didn't hear before:
The voice of a junkshop mannequin.
A pep rally of autumn leaves.
Puddles giggling (hoping you'll step in them).
Footsteps of a friend you'll never know walking away.
The grumbling of tired bricks.
The soft cry of a cat looking for a friend.
The foghorn moan of sad streetlights.

Listen close.

You'll hear your own heart beating too.
 

Tale of the Brooklyn Dolls

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had many different kinds of dolls... short ones, fuzzy ones, blue ones, green ones, some that looked like other girls, and some that looked like princesses and some that looked like ninja warriors. As time went by, she grew tired of the blue doll, then the fuzzy doll, then the little princess until one day she realized she had no more dolls left at all!

In some ways this discovery made her very sad, but it also made her feel that perhaps she was all grown up. In fact, perhaps that's all growing up was... letting go of your playthings!

She thought about this for a very long time but soon was distracted by other Big Girl matters like making cakes or building houses or helping the homeless. 

She forgot about it for years until she happened to be walking down Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn where she saw a box filled with dolls that looked an awful lot like some she used to have. She stopped dead in her tracks. And stared. (Even though someone had once told her staring was impolite, she didn't think the dolls much minded and actually kind of LIKED it.)

"Do you miss them?" said an old man who was standing nearby.

"Miss them? Are these MINE?" said the now much older girl.

"Maybe they were at one time," the old man said. "But once you give them up... Well, now you would need to buy them BACK. I'll sell you one for a dollar -- and if you pay five dollars, I'll thrown in an extra one FREE."

She felt a little sorry for all of the dolls crammed into the box (and a little embarrassed too since many didn't have any clothes at all.) For a moment, she considered buying just one. And the minute she thought about buying just one, she thought about buy TEN, and then she thought: "What if I bought the WHOLE BOX?!?!"

"Thank you very much for your kind offer," she said (if she had learned anything as a little girl it was to be polite).

"Why not?" he called out to her as she walked away. "I can see you miss them."

She did miss them. But she also didn't want to say the reason she was walking away IN FRONT OF the dolls and upset them. She didn't want to tell them she had realized growing up wasn't just getting rid of things she no longer wanted. (Any spoiled girl could do THAT!) But it was knowing that you didn't need to go back and feel nostalgic AND you didn't need to just buy NEW things to fill in those empty spaces. 

Sometimes Growing Up meant being happy with yourself and sometimes (actually most of the time!) that was enough. Sometimes the world is MORE than enough, just the way it is.

[Hmmmmm.... Maybe we'll wait until you're a little older to tell you this story. 

Then again, maybe you'll find out all by yourself and live it better than I have.]

Labor Day, 2013: Brooklyn, NY

Dear Slumbering Saint,

Here is a photo of you and your mother in Brooklyn, New York.

¡Que bueno!

There are so many beautiful things I'd like to show you in the world:

Let's see how many animals we can find in passing clouds!
Let's go looking for the gold at the end of the rainbow!
Let's sit very, very still and wait to see the elves who are just around that corner!
Let's stick our tongues out and see if we can taste how blue the sky is!