Hmmmm.....

I was just waking this morning when I heard the following story on NPR. Garrett Peterson, a 16-month boy born with a defective windpipe would go through phases when he turned blue from being unable to breathe. Obviously, this was a critical, life-threatening decision that had his family at the edge. Doctors, using the technology of a 3D printer, constructed a device to hold open Garrett’s windpipe and help in to stay in place until the windpipe becomes strong enough to work on its own.

Amazing!

Yet, what caused my pause was this quote from the doctor, “We’re talking about taking something like dust and converting it into body parts.”

I applaud the wonders of technology and the doctors out-of-the-box thinking and persistence in finding a way to help Garrett. It was the whole dust to body parts thing that got me. Call it a Lenten season response, yet, quotes like that bring me to a line from a man whose birthday we just celebrated, Albert Einstein, who said, “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

I have set my dvr to record the episodes of the new Cosmos series featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson and I do believe members of the faith community must have ongoing conversation with science and that we need to balance and compliment one another.

Perhaps, I am missing the voice of faith being shared and highlighted and listened to in the key conversations of our lives. I find myself frequently asking, “Where’s the voice of the faith community?”

The role and perspective of faith needs to be invited into the conversation, the view from the faith lens needs to be shared and we need to be ones who boldly think, who use our reason and our experience and our tradition and the stories foundational to our faith need to be part of the dialogue.

Technology moves rapidly and sometimes I think our humanness has a hard time keeping up. The faith voice can serve to re-mind us who we are.

Thoughts?

sj;