3MN: The more we try to control, the more the world around us grows silent.

Happy Thursday!

In the next 3 minutes:

1. The smell of formaldehyde got me thinking.
2. The more we try to control, the more the world grows silent.
3. What is most important to you right now?

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Minute 1 - The abysmal smell of formaldehyde.

In college, one of my roommates was a medical doctor. I knew he was home when the smell of formaldehyde washed over me. I hated it.

I get lightheaded when I skin my knee, so his stories about looking at the inner workings of the human body were my nightmares.

This demanding class for medical students is called "Gross Anatomy" and serves as a cornerstone of medical training, giving students intimate knowledge of human anatomy. However, while the training is necessary, it is deeply unsettling to reduce a once-living person into tissue and bone.

For this reason, it is a tradition in many medical schools to hold a service honoring the person who donated their bodies for the education of others. Hold on to the thought of this ceremony during medical school because it is going to tell us a lot about the "primacy of the invisible." (Pope Benedict XVI).

Minute 2 - The universe is falling silent.

For many people, the universe is falling silent; in our scientifically driven age, we turn our eyes toward the heavens and hear. . .nothing.

Sociologist Hartmut Rosa has attempted to describe this silencing of experience.

“The fundamental fear of modernity is fear that the world’s falling mute,” he says. “Modernity stands at risk of no longer hearing the world. . . . Modernity has lost its ability to be called, to be reached.” (The emphases are his.)

The more we try to control (through science, technology, politics, economics, and other reasons), the more the world around us falls silent.

Minute 3 - What is most important to you right now?

No scalpel, however precise, can expose the invisible pull of value and meaning. The reason the medical students hold this service for their cadaver is because there is an invisible force that no microscope can see.

The more try to control , the more these invisible forces grow silent around us.

Ask yourself: What is most important to me right now?

The likelihood is that it is not materialistic or can be seen under a microscope: it's a relationship, a feeling of love or security, or an experience.

VERSE OF THE WEEK

But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. - John 4:14

See you next Thursday,

Payton Minzenmayer

P.S. - Where does your city rank in America's happiest cities to live in.