Salt and Light

By the time my mom was my age, she was legally blind from macular degeneration. My aunt also had dry macular degeneration, so I have taken vision vitamins for decades. However, because of my diabetes and general health, I still deal with vision problems. I had cataracts in both eyes removed, but have to get bimonthly shots to prevent floaters in my eyes because of diabetic retinopathy. In addition, I am at risk for glaucoma because of high intraocular pressure. A recent treatment made me blind for 24 hours, a very stressful 24 hours. Needless to say, I have educated myself about vision. We see when light enters the eye. It is focused by the cornea and lens, and lands on the retina, where light-sensitive cells called rods and cones convert the photons into electrical signals.  These signals then travel through the optic nerve to the brain, where the images are perceived. No one has seen God's full glory ( 1:18; 1 Timothy 1:17; Exodus 33:20).  However, people can "see" God ...

One of my favorite verses is Luke 2:52: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man." I love it because it shows that Jesus was growing in more than one way all the time. We all know how to grow in wisdom, read a book, take a course, study something! Favor with God, obviously, means to grow spiritually. How do we grow spiritually? We seek God. We pray, read our Bibles, worship, fellowship, tithe, serve, etc.... To me, being in favor with others speaks to our emotional and social well-being, which Daniel Goleman refers to as emotional intelligence, or EQ. This is a little trickier because some of us have closed down our hearts or developed what the Bible describes as "hearts of stone."  In Jeremiah 17:9-10, we are told,  "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"  This verse highlights that the human heart is inherently prone to deception, corruption, and self-deception, often leading peo...

In my last entry on quantum faith, I briefly mentioned my fascination with the brain. I'm going to belabor it here because I believe it may help some folks as they study Christ and the Bible. I first started really studying the brain about 30 years ago. I felt that as a science teacher, I should know the science behind how we learn, so I could help my students learn. There are two ways to affect learning: presynaptic and postsynaptic. Literally, before and after the synapse, the two main ways to remember something postsynaptically are by rote and by association. Rote is where you repeat the material. To move information from short-term to long-term memory, the magic number is 7. This means you must repeat the new information a total of seven times to move it into long-term memory. You all remember this approach from learning your ABCs and your times tables.A quicker approach to long-term memory is associational memory, where you attach new information to something you already know ...

I've been reading a book about spirituality and the brain. Now, I know I have not shown it here, but I am a brain geek. At a later date, I will discuss this book,  The Awakened Brain   by Dr Lisa Miller, because it makes some fascinating claims, but today I want to discuss a rabbit hole it sent me down, quantum physics. The first thing I did was look up quantum faith. Quantum faith is a concept blending the ideas of quantum physics with faith . It proposes that just as quantum particles react to observation, our focused faith and words can bring spiritual principles into tangible manifestation, seeing miracles (like Jesus walking on water) not as violations of physics, but as operating under different, deeper laws. In the late 1600s, Sir Isaac Newton published the foundation for classical physics. He described the laws of motion: inertia, F=m x a and action/reaction.  One force he was particularly interested in was gravity.  But classical physics doesn't explain ...

I have a very dear friend who is delighted when her dresses have pockets. There is a childlike joy that overcomes her that I find delightful, but I am not a person to whom joy comes easily, Joy and happiness are often used interchangeably. However, happiness technically refers to the pleasurable feelings (emotions) that result from a situation, experience, or object; whereas, joy is a state of mind that can be found even in times of grief or uncertainty. Thus, we can cultivate joy independent of our circumstances. The neurobiology of joy is complex; a few neurotransmitters stand out in promoting positive feelings: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins. The good news is that changes to our lives can increase these neurotransmitter levels. For example, running may produce a "runner's high;" spending time with a baby releases oxytocin, the "cuddle hormone" that makes you feel connected. Your ability to find joy may provide long-lasting health benefits. Your...