i knew physics would come in handy one day....

first:
just need to say thank you to all the awesome people who have prayed for me during these past 1 1/2 years. ya'll are amazingly encouraging and throw incredible post cancer parties. ;)

somehow thank you doesn't quite seem enough.
the words are inadequate to really express my gratitude.
when i find a better way to say it, i will.


second: (for all of you scientists)
i read this a while ago and this is the first chance i have gotten to write it all down. Next time somebody uses the metaphor of light and darkness (with light = good and darkness = bad), think about this:

"In the Hebrew tradition...light is a metaphor. God makes a cosmos out of the nothingness, a molecular composition, of which He is not and never has been, as any thing is limiting, and God has no limits...And into this being, into this existence, God first creates light. This light is not to be confused with the sun and moon and stars, as they are not created until later. He simply creates light, a nonsubstance that is like a particle and like a wave, but perhaps neither, just some kind of travelling energy...Light, then, becomes a fitting metaphor for a nonbeing who is. God, if like light, travels at the speed of light, and because space and time are mingled with speed, the speed of light is the magic, exact number that allows a kind of escape from time....The faster you move, physicists have found, the less you experience time. And if you move at the speed of light, you will never age; you are outside of time; you are an eternal creature. But...you and I, made from molecules, cannot travel at the speed of light and cannot escape time, at least not with a body. Consider the complexity of light in light of the Hebrew metaphor: we don't see light; we see what it touches. It is more or less invisible, made from nothing, just purposed and focused energy, infinite in its power (it will never tire if fitted into a vacuum, going on forever). How fitting then, for God to create an existence, then a metaphor, as if to say, here is something entirely unlike you, outside of time, infinite in its power and thrust: here is something you can experience but cannot understand. Throughout the remainder of the Bible, then, God calls himself light. "

Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

the Lord knew that perhaps the true, deeper meaning of calling himself light (and how the scientific properties of light reflect his glory) would not be discovered until thousands of years after he originally spoke it to the Hebrew people.

thank you physicists for figuring stuff like this out. and thank you donald miller for writing about it in such a way that us non-scientific people could begin to understand it.