I Have A Vocation, Just Not That Vocation or Responsibility, What's That?

In an older era, when the lines between academic and religious instruction were far more blurry, professors were described as being "called" to their professorships, just as we speak of clergy being called to their cures.

In that light, I am in my first call and feel an odd affinity with my clerical analogs. If I were a regular/ordinary professor, the parallels would be more striking. I would teach on a regular basis. Note, for instance, that early Protestant New England used to refer to a ceremonial centered around the preaching of the Word as "lecture."

My job also familiarizes me with the roles that clergy have beyond their primary job description. I raise money (or at least try to do so). I advise on the purchase of equipment. I go to and sometimes lead meetings. I have control over a small budget and must watch carefully to make sure it is being spent properly.

Now, most white collar workers share these secondary roles in one way or another. The commonality between professors and clerics is a central focus on the proclamation and interpretation of texts, an unusual freedom from bureaucratic forms of control, the need to be mostly self-directed, and the sense that one's most valuable and efficient interactions are on the personal level. The cure of souls and the education of the mind most naturally occur on the scale of the individual, so we both recognize the importance of collaborative development in the realm of both the spirit and the intellect.

Older language again teaches us something. George Fox used to roam around 17th century England harassing the professors in their steeple houses, by which he meant priests of the Church of England in their parish churches. In this thinking, the priest, elder, presbyter etc. is always a professor of "religion" or of the things of God.

Recently, Derek posted on his concerns about a curious phenomenon: "Clergy tend to be folks who didn't/couldn't find fulfillment in the church as laity."

One part of his discussion (oft mentioned in the comments) touches my experience. If you're bright and have a devout, yet geeky interest in Christianity, people are always wondering why you don't become ordained. My answer is very simple: my vocation is not to be a priest. My vocation is to keep people from dying on other planetary bodies, unravel and meditate upon the history of Earth and other planetary bodies, and possibly figure out to how make other planetary bodies more like Earth (or otherwise flourish).

Not all of us are going to have such engaging and time-consuming vocations, but most of us are not going to have clerical ones. What we need to think about is how being a lay person can be more fulfilling. And part of that is understanding that the vocation of a lay person is often complementary to what they do in the world. In some cases, it's analogous. How many of your church's Sunday School teachers are teaching or have taught elsewhere? Do you have interior decorators, hair dressers, florists, and other aesthetic experts on the Altar Guild?

Sometimes, what the laity does in church is not analogous, but still complementary. A lawyer may enjoy helping out with the emergency homeless shelter, because she enjoys ministering to the material needs of the disadvantaged rather than their legal ones. The concern I have for the laity is that we too often are repeating the patterns of our vocations in the world within the church, or the exact, yet kindred opposite, we pretend that the standard operating procedure of human institutional structures does not apply on Sunday morning. And I see danger in both of those bad habits for clergy-lay relations as well as the general health of our parishes. If we want a church that serves the world as Jesus calls us to do, we need a laity that feels empowered and renewed by what they do in the church, not a laity that is simply transferring their skill set from the world to the church.

As Derek mentions, we can do this, because we have means that the world does not know. I truly believe that God does empower, restore, and direct us by the things we do and that this process can happen more effectually if we have a better sense of who He is, what He has done, and what we can do to relate to Him, as he always is seeking to relate to us.

The other issue that comes up in the comments is what happens when a lay person is better educated in the intellectual content of the faith and/or perhaps better formed spiritually than the clergy. The church is a hospital for sinners. The Three Holy Hierarchs and the Desert Fathers and Mothers are constantly reminding us that the soul and the body are cared for by analogous means and arts.

In medicine, basic science researchers without M.D.'s are common. Excluded from clinical practice, by their own choice, they explore fundamental biology, chemistry, and even physics in search of ways to improve the standard of care. In collaboration with physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and others, they have helped bring medicine to extraordinary, if imperfect heights in comparison with the 19th century. There is jealousy and conflict in this relationship, but it tends to be generational. Doctors believe the science of their own day over the bleeding edge.

In that light, it's not surprising to me that there's tension between clergy and other theologically educated individuals. Clergy, like many allied professionals, suffer from a little impostor syndrome.

Clergy need to realize that their specialness does not lie in how smart they are or how fit they are for ministry. We set them apart in particular because they meet a standard, but once they've met that standard, we set them apart because they have made a choice, vows, and taken on the high responsibilities that come with the cure of souls, the preaching of the Word, and the celebration of the Sacraments. Their specialness lies in the acceptance of that responsibility, just as my project responsibilities change between when I'm Principal Investigator of a grant or I'm just being paid off the grant. If I'm PI, my specialness does not change if my student is more brilliant and better-educated in physics than I am. (Which I'm sure is going to happen some day.) I'm responsible for directing their abilities to the best project outcome I can.

I wish I could separate out what clergy do and laity do and talk about spheres and onlapping magisteria etc. But when I read the Gospels, I don't see Jesus or the Apostles, our clerical prototypes, keeping to that kind of script. Our lay prototypes are the ones who Jesus heals and are sent out to proclaim what has been done for them. The only true distinction I see is one of responsibility, "Feed my sheep."

Il Papa E La Sapienza (E La Scienza)

Through a couple of episodes of the narrative, Michael Flynn has suggested in his recent novel, Eifelheim , that heresy trials are the aitia of academic peer review. In the first, a brilliant physicist is accused by the chair of her department of trying to use physics to justify young earth creationism whereas her ideas about slight variations in the speed of light and the quantization of the observed galactic red shifts stem from the desire for elegance and simplicity in an area of cosmological mathematics. But all the while she notes how much the encounter feels like a heresy trial. In the second, William of Occam indicates his disdain for Durandus of Mende and excoriates him especially for sitting on the tribunal that condemned some of his Commentary on the Sentences , to which a colleague replies, "Peer-review is the the fate of all philosophers worth reading."

Flynn's suggestion brings insight into Benedict XVI's disinvitation from Universita La Sapienza in Rome as mentioned in places such as Entangled States . I need to go off to work soon, but let me quickly sketch the tensions. The Pope is very much an academic, but his present office theoretically is unaccountable to earthly critique or authority and claims a potentially universal and perpetual jurisdiction over truth. Moreover, those who sought to disinvite him are clearly disturbed by his justification (through another philosopher, Paul Feyeraband) of Galileo's condemnation for heresy as supremely rational and just. Feyeraband, I should note, is chiefly known as a proponent of "scientific anarchism," in which science proceeds not by falsification or logical positivism but by ad hoc procedures that aim toward a particular consensus about the beautiful and the good (which is not necessarily beautiful or good.) Theology, I should add, might as well be a science in Feyeraband's critique. So as far as I can tell, Benedict XVI is being criticized by Italian physicists for viewing science as fallible on the same grounds on which theology might be considered fallible, yet suggests the theological community in the form of the Roman Catholic Church thus had the right in the 17th century as now to assess the fallibility of science without any consideration for the fallibility of theology and certainly without any peer review. Goose meet gander, I suppose.

Such a man must be allowed academic freedom so that his risibility may be exposed to the world entire. Shame on you, physicists of Italy.

While Waiting For Evening

I currently am at my parents' house, who are sufficiently plugged in that I can do some work remotely and read blogs.

While trying to find out about the latest instance of a college student fabricating an incident in which they were violently attacked for their conservative beliefs, I shuttled over to the First Things blog, where I read this little mal mot from Thomas Sieger Derr, who apparently is professor of environmental ethics at Smith College ,

P.S. #2, on reading statistics with a viewpoint: The World Meteorological Organization reports that 2007 was one of the ten hottest years on record, most of those ten years being in the last decade. But it also seems that 2007 is on track to be the coldest year since 1998, the year of the large El Niño surge. And those who watch the sun’s behavior report a quiescent period with no sun spots, possibly presaging the return of a cooler earth – even, heaven forbid, a period like the “little ice age” of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Naturally, no mention of this happened at Bali.

Examining the relationship between the Sun and climate is a very important part of the work done by one of my research groups. And I'm one of the three people in the group who do work on the Sun and past climate. What those who watch the Sun's behavior know is that we are near the trough of the ~11 year solar cycle (the 11 year solar cycle is a name for convenience...it varies between 9 and 13 years). Looking at this handy-dandy record of the last 16 years from the Space Weather Prediction Center , we note that solar activity is about the same level as it was in the autumn of 1996, which was nearly exactly eleven years ago. What an amazing coincidence? The Little Ice Age (strictly should be called the Maunder Minimum), it's true, was a cold period with little solar activity. So little solar activity that northern European scientists were not familiar with the aurora borealis until the late 18th century. I'd wager someone has seen the aurora borealis in southern Norway recently.

Oddly enough, the next solar maximum is scheduled for 2012-2013 or so, the same year that permanent sea ice is currently forecast to vanish from the North Pole. For your further edification, some people have been trying to figure out how well the impact of the 11-year solar cycle is simulated in climate models .

Specious Ranting

I just watched Lonnie Thompson's Frontiers of Geophysics Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's (AGU) Fall Meeting. It was an excellent talk. Thompson is the world's leading expert on tropical glacial climate records, and his work has given him perspective on the Earth's past and a fear for Earth's future as he watches the glaciers he samples melt all around him. One of the more interesting points was that tropical glaciers currently are about as extensive as they were ~3200 BC, which depending on your exact chronology is the time of Noah and other evidence of mass disruption of the climate system. It reminded me that the Lord's promise was that He would not destroy all flesh again. Our free will now exceeds the power of the natural releases on the climate system by orders of magnitude. We may become our own destruction if we don't engage in some major metanoia . I'm glad to see that almost all Presidential candidates of both parties (John McCain was especially good) proclaim with their lips how serious an issue this is. Let us pray the seriousness of the crisis does not exceed the seriousness of our leadership in finding solutions. The Lecture has encouraged me to write the paper about low-frequency ocean variability one of my bosses wants me to write.

Some comments on bls's blog by our favorite Quebecois about the brevity of the election cycle has made me seriously think about the possibility of drastic reform in the frame of government in the United States. I would suggest we adopt a Commonwealth-style parliamentary democracy with nationally-drawn constituencies in the House of Representatives and state-based constituencies in the Senate with six or seven year bounds on the length of Congresses. Such a reform would have advantages such as a more responsive executive and a potentially longer election cycle. But the most immediate advantage would be in budgetary matters. Commonwealth constitutions either mandate in law or convention that the government must pass the budget to stay in power. Currently, the funding of many agencies (including my beloved NASA) is very much on hold due to horse trading in Congress. They call it a "continuing resolution." Of course, such a system probably would move much of the pork to the proposed budget, but it would allow more time for popular outrage to be heard and less doubt in government agencies about what projects can be funded each year. At present, one of my bosses is awaiting a decision about whether a mission he helped to propose is being funded. But NASA can't announce the decision, because the budget that funded the mission has languished for two years.

Despite my viewing of Thompson's lecture, I am not in San Francisco at AGU. One of my colleagues came into my office and asked me why I wasn't there, praising to the skies the parties, the available women, and the amazing ability of one of my other colleagues to attract non-conference attendees during conference travel. And, yes, reading the many blogs from AGU, I discovered all sorts of interesting folks with whom I could be spending time instead of sitting in my office being less productive than usual thanks to the emptiness of the building. But I can't go to every conference, and it's worth remembering that very few graduate students can go to two conferences per year with the level of effort I expend.

This week marks the first anniversary of my first and only visit to Fresno, the seat of the Dioceses of San Joaquin (that isn't a typo). I've gone through many waves of thought on this issue, especially reading the thoughts at Thanksgiving in All Things, Haligweorc, AKMA's Random Thoughts, Carioca Confessions, and the ENS coverage. My conclusion is that the parishes (and missions) should go where they wish, but that Bishop Schofield should be deposed and deprived of control of the temporalities by civil process. It seems harsh, I know, but I argue that the bishop should not be the only person in the Diocese with a conscience unbound by his prudence. Knowing the example of Bennison in Pennsylvania, it's fairly easy to see what mischief a bishop can do with a majority of the Diocese quite uninspired by his leadership. A bishop can intimidate vestries by restricting their choice of rector, those in the ordination process by sending them to a particular seminary, the clergy by countless other means. Liberal bishops use these means. Conservative bishops use these means. They have the most power under the canons. They deserve the greatest penalty for their violation. I'm betting I could get agreement from both Chrysostom and Winthrop on that score. As for the parishes and missions, the mission of parishes for and against the bishop likely has been hurt by this illegal fiction of secession. The gospel will be furthered by a free choice. The diocesan corporation (sans Schofield) should forgive or maintain mission debts on an equal basis no matter their affiliation. That will be justice tempered with mercy.

Comic Book Immortality By Association

MIT's alumni magazine put together an entertaining comic strip history of the alternately depressing and exhilarating post-Pathfinder era in Mars exploration. I know many of the characters personally, including the instruments... and have heard many footnote stories.

Surface Pressure

The week has been full of ups and downs. Some of the downs were beyond my control, others not so much. Perhaps the most amusing of these setbacks happened a couple of hours ago when I noticed that a certain type of simulation I thought I finally had managed to figure out had some very high surface pressures (>100 times than they should be). I think I've tracked down the problem, but I feel rather embarassed...

The Summer Is Magic

That is, it is a giant vacuum of time. I've been working for the last couple of hours or so to push a paper toward readiness for submission tomorrow. I was hoping to submit two other papers by Michaelmas. As it is, I know I have to submit one paper (and possibly do a bit of work on another one submitted at the same time) by Grosstestetide (look that one up). Unfortunately, neither of these two papers are the ones I intended to submit at the beginning of the summer. Oh, and there's my fifth project, which is paying half my stipend at present. As one of the postdocs in a related field (and a church friend) said to me recently, "You're 100% funded and 450% committed."

While I do feel like a productive graduate student (if thin and stretched like butter spread over too much bread), I have to think of my thesis research, which feels a little too ghostly at the moment for my comfort. Some of what I'm doing is related to my topic, but part of me wants to have a clear research plan on paper. But frankly I don't have the time.

Blogging Has Been Light, Will Remain Light

Last Friday, I was talking with an older friend of mine about an upcoming conference in our field (she's been attending for over twenty years). I wasn't thinking about going, because I had nothing to present. My friend was saying that I needed to go and network etc. I'm thinking that my boss is a generous soul, but I'm not wasting federal money on a networking trip, nor on presenting research that I've essentially presented at two conferences.

Fast forward to this Wednesday evening, when I am writing an abstract for this conference twenty four hours before the submission deadline. Why, you might ask. Well, because I suddenly had something new to present. So because of this new project, I expect blogging will be light.

Chapter has resolved to include Abbot Cuthbert Johnson OSB in our prayers. That is all.

Conference Madness

Many academics read this blog, so let's ask a few rhetorical questions:

Does one day of your conference wrap up with a discussion of advising the government about how to execute a multibillion dollar project? Note that the government is legally obligated to listen to your advice and yet present government officials believe that it is illegal for them to consider the advice as the primary influence on decisionmaking (and keep hinting at that at every conceivable opportunity).

Do presentations involve standing in the hot sun for two and a half hours, wondering why you didn't bring sunscreen or water?

Do you find vocabulary from your ecclesial life appearing occasionally in presentations but meaning completely different things?

Yes, so that's my life at present.

Today, I also made my first operational weather forecast for another planet. On that note.

Collect for Astronomy

O Lord, who is adorned with light and whose glory the heavens declare, prevent us in all our humble inquiries into Thy works. But we especially beseech Thee to favor our probings into the waters of the Deep and to give us a clear vision of thy sublime creature [ target name ]. May the instrument be tuned to its proper settings, the target be tracked precisely, and the computers read, write, and analyze without pause or error. Bless, keep, and prosper the handiwork especially of the operator, for if we be incompetents, Lord, thou and she alone may preserve our observations unto utility. This we ask, Father, through the Word and Wisdom of all the worlds, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.