January 30, 2008
Gravitas redux
Plumb lines are the simplest of tools for harnessing a phenomenon so mysterious and so complicated that even the most brilliant astrophysicists are yet quite to understand it.We call it gravity. Earth life would be even graver without it. Space cadets, professional basketball players, and ballet dancers seem simply to ignore it. They simply float. Aristotle said it is why stuff falls and then went on to something more interesting. Newton devised a formula and measured it. Einstein in one of his major league moments thought it caused by something like a curved-space ball. The quantum folk imagine itsybitsy gravitons charging all about in its service, but they’ve yet to catch one.A plumb line is literally a string with a hunk of lead (plumbum) or some other heavy object tied to one end. Used properly, it keeps things on the straight and level. Just take hold of the loose end and let the whole thing dangle until it’s still. When it stops, you’re more or less in touch with the center of the earth and on the upright with a lot less effort than usual.God took it for a remarkable metaphor and liked it so much she used it to show and tell the prophet Amos what she had in mind for errant behavior. Amos claimed not to be an engineer but a tree surgeon, and that he had no idea what to do with it. As the story goes, he ended up doing it, anyway (Amos 7.7-15).Lasers have pretty well replaced plumb lines of late, so the metaphor may be lost on this quantum generation. But the church, enamored as it sometimes can be with past matters of great gravity and sometimes even mystery, must surely remember.Anyhow, God has not forgot. Her same old plumb line just swings there as it does, ignoring Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle ever so silently, purposefully, and, of course, certainly.
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