Intelligent Design

How to Get Big Results with Little Effort

Have you ever taught a child to "pump" their legs back and forth to launch a swing higher and higher? At first the child works very, very hard, flailing feet and legs at all the wrong times, going nowhere and frustrating themselves to the point of crying out, "puh-leez push me!"

But once they learn to feel for the rythym of the swing, and work within it, even the small force of three-year-old legs is enough to build quite a bit of momentum. A small effort, applied at the right time in the right place yields big results. This is the power of resonance.

Now consider these commonly cited words from Jesus, delivered for those who have grown tired of working alone, even if (and maybe especially because) their effort is expended where they want and when they want:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." (Matt. 11:28-30)

A yoke is an instrument built for two laborers working in unison. Jesus instructs us to find Him, come to Him, resonate with Him. And in so doing He promises that a small human effort will be magnified beyond measure.

Resonant Frequencies of a Room

I just came across the original recording of Alvin Lucier made in 1969, entitled "I Am Sitting in a Room." With it, he explores the resonant frequencies of a room by recording and re-recording himself as he delivers the following monologue:
"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have."
The first measured delivery carries emotional weight, punctuated as it is by his occassional stuttering. The somewhat pained monologue gives way to the song of the room with each re-recording, in which imperfect Lucier becomes the perfect string vibrating with resonance to the soundboard of the space.
For me, listening to this was a spiritual experience as I reflected on my own speech in my own room, or for heaven's sake, the sound of singing in a cathedral and the way it all must sound to God.
To listen to Lucier's performance click here

By Coincidence or By Design

I am starting to read a book called, "A Little Book of Coincidence in the Solar System" by John Martineau.

He writes,
"Funnily enough, scientists are are currently puzzling over the strange fact that the whole universe seems special. There is exactly enough material in the universe to make it, and the ratios between the fundamental forces and physical constants seem specifically tuned to produce an amazingly complex, beautiful, and enduring universe. Fiddle with any bit of it, even slightly, and you get a universe of black holes, insubstantial fizzballs, or other lifeless set-ups. Is this design or coincidence?"

I have heard arguments on the topic of Intelligent Design boil down to this very question. But why? Why are design and coincidence mutually exclusive? Opposites? Why not cooperative forces in creation?

When I ponder my own design processes, I would say that although I am the conscious creator or at least the curator of each element I apply to any given layout, I cannot say for sure that cooincidence, or chance does not enter into the process and affect the outcome of any given composition.

I feel certain there is a Designer of the Universe. But to personify that Designer might lead us down the path towards splitting intention (design) from intuition (coincidence). Maybe the Designer is that same force that runs through each of us as we create our worldly works. It is a force that draws from an existing wellspring of material knowledge while accepting influence from attunement to the unknowable truth of the matter at hand.

The Divine Section: 101

The Divine Section, also known as the Golden Ratio, is the first principle of nature's design I could think of and that I have already put into occasional use in my design work. As I began researching it, the concept became more and more interesting.

The Divine Section is a line segment sectioned into two according to the golden ratio. The total length "a+b" is to the longer segment "a" as "a" is to the shorter segment "b"

Zeising wrote in 1854:
The Golden Ratio is a universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form.

The Divine Section is seen in Nature in the human body's proportions among other things. It is also linked to the Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Spiral. I hope to explore these interlinked concepts in future posts. I also hope to explore the underlying ideas linking these concepts together, and the purpose of these designs in nature.