At the Y this morning, I was listening to Speaking of Faith, the radio program about ethics, religion, meaning and ideas. Or something like that. I am in the middle of one of the programs right now, so I can't go to the beginning of the show to grab the tagline.

I had a couple of those moments of tearful epiphany this morning. The first piece I listened to is this particle physicist from England, whose pedigree and qualifications are so impressive that when he starts talking about religion, you have to listen because he's so incredibly recognized for what he says. He's also some kind of high mucky-much in the Anglican Church as well as being a physicist. His whole concept of God is gorgeous and I won't try to sum up his arguments. You can find it on "Quarks and Creation."

What he said that really grabbed me was this:
All the really interesting and new things come out of the interface between order and chaos. If you're too far into order, it's lockstep, it's mechanical, every day is the same. If you're too far into chaos, then everything falls apart and nothing lasts and things are all about smoke and clouds and nothing else.

This just gobsmacked me. This is precisely how I feel about working and my job as a technology consultant. It CAN'T be mechanical, getting up every day, being part of the rat race, the cog in the wheel, etc. I love the chaos of it, but I also love the rational, logical beauty of it. My very best self, my very best moments are exactly there, at the interface between order and chaos.

The second piece I started was less interesting over all, an interview with a Unitarian chaplain to the police and forestry people who have to be there when people have disappeared into woods or fallen into rivers, etc. So she deals regularly with death and its consequences. She says that the Buddhists argue that we are constantly and always preparing for our death, and I got that one immediately. I've always been preparing for my debilitated old age, storing up memories, making sure that my LIFE was interesting and fulfilling and fun, making sure I never got STUCK in misery or resentment or law suits or ongoing conflict (those things will truly screw up an old age...)

And I thought about Scott and how he's helping me prepare for my own death very consciously.

Then the woman who's being interviewed says this:

"If you posit a world in which the ultimate value is life, then you're utterly lost. Because we're all gonna die. And then you get have to posit this whole life after death thing, which nobody has experienced and lived to tell about it ("I died and came back" stories notwithstanding.)

"If you posit a world in which the ultimate value is LOVE, then there's something to DO."

And I went, YEAH. There is something to do, and all we need to do is allow ourselves to grow into the person who acts love out. It doesn't matter, in the end, who we grow into because as long as we're on the trajectory of love, we will not only have something to do, we'll know what it is.