Sunday, January 30, 2005
It's All About Angles
I spoke those very words tonight while under Gordon's kitchen sink. I got a semi-frantic call from him -- he was heading out the door for a very important meeting and they had a leaking sink. I won't go into details, but I'm pretty much they're handyman. I picked up my pipe wrench and adjustable wrench and headed out the door.
Our oldest daughter, Tiffany, is a math teacher. Don't ask me where she got the genes for math -- if she didn't come out of the womb looking EXACTLY like me, and if I hadn't endured 20+ hours of back labor, I'd say she must have been adopted. By the age of three, she was smarter than her father and I put together. When she was in college majoring in math and started talking about imaginary numbers, I said, "hold it right there, cowgirl... yeeerrr talkin' gibberish!" How could I get a handle on imaginary numbers when I could barely handle the real ones??
I've learned a lot about numbers, theorems, hypotheses, catenaries (the St. Louis Gateway Arch is an example of a catenary curve shape), and angles. Ok, I really haven't learned, but I've paid attention to the vacation conversations between my genius brother and my genius daughter (26 +/- years his junior). Uh... a little FYI here, the link to the numbers page is just a joke (the first part), according to the person who posted -- but ya gotta admit, it did have you thinking!). Fibonacci numbers (fascinating and cute all at once because it talks about math AND fluffy bunnies)... The Golden Ratio -- this tells us why our brains determine whether people, places and things are attractive --- it's intriguing, fascinating and mystifying all at once. Honestly, though, math scares me; Not as much as those ubiquitous imaginary numbers (which my imaginary friends are counting on their imaginary fingers as I type), but how everything adds up perfectly... that mystifies me. Math, plain and simply, is pure.
I had to preach... strike that... I got to preach one Sunday because God had laid a message on my heart about worship. The night before, I asked our daughters, "what does worship mean to you?". Tiffany suddenly got excited. She has known all of her Christian life that God speaks to us all in different ways. She could see it happen to other people. She could see God revealing himself in a way that they could understand. That hadn't happened for Tiffany yet, or at least in a way that excited her enough to tell us about it. I tell her all the time that I pray that God will surprise her in some new way every day. I don't recall when this happened -- I believe it was at a Focus convention up in Dallas... or maybe in one of her small groups. But somewhere along the line, she was directed to the book of Revelation where John, in a dream state or trance, sees a new heaven and a new earth. Then John does what any normal mathematician would do.... he measures it. "And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal."
I can't tell you how exciting that was for Tiffany. She felt that God could have put that in there just for her, because that's something she understood. God showed her that heaven is a perfect cube. She felt full of worship and awe because God cared enough to reveal heaven to her in His own way... mathematically. Surprise! It was all about angles.
So there I am, Real Live Plumber, on my back with my head sticking under Real Live Preacher's sink. I disconnected the offending pipes. You can't just undo one... you end up with PVC all akimbo. The important part is putting it back together. You have a pipe coming from the wall that joins to a T-joint and an elbow joint. One end of the T-joint connects to the garbage disposal, the other end connects to the other sink. If one is off only a fraction, it's gonna leak. So with my body, head, and elbow braced, I lined them up best as I could and tightened them. We turned the water on and, voila, no leak. The angles don't have to be equal, but they do all have to add up. It's all about angles.
Oh, and remember... 1 + 1 really CAN equal 3, and, according to Tiffany, math is easy as pi.
PS: Because of my shameless namedropping (RealLivePreacher), I'll plug his book. You can buy it here. You can also read his most recent article in The Christian Century here. It's one you don't want to miss.
I spoke those very words tonight while under Gordon's kitchen sink. I got a semi-frantic call from him -- he was heading out the door for a very important meeting and they had a leaking sink. I won't go into details, but I'm pretty much they're handyman. I picked up my pipe wrench and adjustable wrench and headed out the door.
Our oldest daughter, Tiffany, is a math teacher. Don't ask me where she got the genes for math -- if she didn't come out of the womb looking EXACTLY like me, and if I hadn't endured 20+ hours of back labor, I'd say she must have been adopted. By the age of three, she was smarter than her father and I put together. When she was in college majoring in math and started talking about imaginary numbers, I said, "hold it right there, cowgirl... yeeerrr talkin' gibberish!" How could I get a handle on imaginary numbers when I could barely handle the real ones??
I've learned a lot about numbers, theorems, hypotheses, catenaries (the St. Louis Gateway Arch is an example of a catenary curve shape), and angles. Ok, I really haven't learned, but I've paid attention to the vacation conversations between my genius brother and my genius daughter (26 +/- years his junior). Uh... a little FYI here, the link to the numbers page is just a joke (the first part), according to the person who posted -- but ya gotta admit, it did have you thinking!). Fibonacci numbers (fascinating and cute all at once because it talks about math AND fluffy bunnies)... The Golden Ratio -- this tells us why our brains determine whether people, places and things are attractive --- it's intriguing, fascinating and mystifying all at once. Honestly, though, math scares me; Not as much as those ubiquitous imaginary numbers (which my imaginary friends are counting on their imaginary fingers as I type), but how everything adds up perfectly... that mystifies me. Math, plain and simply, is pure.
I had to preach... strike that... I got to preach one Sunday because God had laid a message on my heart about worship. The night before, I asked our daughters, "what does worship mean to you?". Tiffany suddenly got excited. She has known all of her Christian life that God speaks to us all in different ways. She could see it happen to other people. She could see God revealing himself in a way that they could understand. That hadn't happened for Tiffany yet, or at least in a way that excited her enough to tell us about it. I tell her all the time that I pray that God will surprise her in some new way every day. I don't recall when this happened -- I believe it was at a Focus convention up in Dallas... or maybe in one of her small groups. But somewhere along the line, she was directed to the book of Revelation where John, in a dream state or trance, sees a new heaven and a new earth. Then John does what any normal mathematician would do.... he measures it. "And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed: twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal."
I can't tell you how exciting that was for Tiffany. She felt that God could have put that in there just for her, because that's something she understood. God showed her that heaven is a perfect cube. She felt full of worship and awe because God cared enough to reveal heaven to her in His own way... mathematically. Surprise! It was all about angles.
So there I am, Real Live Plumber, on my back with my head sticking under Real Live Preacher's sink. I disconnected the offending pipes. You can't just undo one... you end up with PVC all akimbo. The important part is putting it back together. You have a pipe coming from the wall that joins to a T-joint and an elbow joint. One end of the T-joint connects to the garbage disposal, the other end connects to the other sink. If one is off only a fraction, it's gonna leak. So with my body, head, and elbow braced, I lined them up best as I could and tightened them. We turned the water on and, voila, no leak. The angles don't have to be equal, but they do all have to add up. It's all about angles.
Oh, and remember... 1 + 1 really CAN equal 3, and, according to Tiffany, math is easy as pi.
PS: Because of my shameless namedropping (RealLivePreacher), I'll plug his book. You can buy it here. You can also read his most recent article in The Christian Century here. It's one you don't want to miss.
