Dear Seekers:

This past week I attended a required clergy continuing education program hosted by the Presbytery of Chicago. A portion of the day was devoted to helping us understand the importance of monitoring our stress. When we are under pressure, we are more likely to violate the personal boundaries of others; we become less supportive of their needs, and our tolerance for their behavior wears thin. At the same time, the presenters wanted us to appreciate how stress helps us grow, building our resilience, so they offered this illustration...

Biosphere 2 was a research project constructed in the Arizona desert in the late 1980s to determine if it was possible to create a closed ecological system which, in the future, might sustain human life on other planets. It’s a massive domed structure that replicates various earth environments, including forests, savannas and even a small coral reef. For the purposes of our conference, the presenter recounted how the researchers suddenly experienced healthy vibrant trees plopping over in Biosphere’s mini forest. It seems, so goes the story, that the trees lacked something called stress wood because of the lack of wind in this artificial environment. The blowing wind strengthens the resilience of the trees as they grow, just like the stress in our lives strengthens our resilience in the storms of life.

Great metaphor! So good that I came home and did a deeper dive into the research, hoping to find more detail about how the absence of stress creates systemic weakness. Unfortunately, the only links to the stress wood accounts turned out to be self-care blogs and wellness websites. In the scientific literature there were a few acknowledgements of some tree growth complications, but none of them spoke of plopping trees. Turns out the scant reference to tree growth weakness had been expanded into artificial accounts of disaster for the wind-sheltered life. I so wanted another ready sermon illustration. 

It's like the frog sitting in slowly heating water. Because the frog is cold-blooded, it does not notice ambient temperature change. If you heat the water slowly enough, goes the illustration, the frog will remain in the water until the poor fellow is being boiled alive and unaware. 

I have heard both politicians and preachers use the boiling frog metaphor to describe moral decay. We allow things to change slowly, and before we know it our frog-world has become toxic because we choose not to see the impending doom. Another great illustration, except it isn’t true either. Turns out at some point the frog registers discomfort, no matter how slowly you raise the heat, and Mr. frog jumps out. That is, unless you use a heavy lid, a step that makes the illustration and the scientist very dark indeed.

This makes me wonder how many other stories I believe simply because I want them to be true. I also fear there are things I write off because they don’t fit my metaphors. Every time I read an article about quantum mechanics or astrophysics, my brain hurts. I find myself setting them aside because they appear to violate everything I think I know about how the world works. They may be true, but my own limitations make me jump out of the pot to get out of the wind, mixing my metaphors just to avoid the stress.

I hope, as a preacher, I’ve learned to tell the difference between a good wellness-blog and hard science. But from time to time, I wish they would seamlessly overlap so I could avoid the stress of not having a clue.

Seeking to make peace with my ignorance, I remain,

With love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

P.S. This past Sunday from the pulpit I announced with great confidence that “Onward, Christian Soldiers" was never in a Presbyterian hymnal. I was wrong. There it is on page 350 of the 1955 Hymnbook. Apologies for sharing with such confidence something that wasn’t true. Please feel free to point out any other misstatements or errors. I hope the boiling heat of the wind will make me a better person.