If you’ve ever seen the musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” or read the Book of Genesis, then you know who Joseph is. The cat is the central figure in the famous thought experiment set up by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. We know quite a bit about Joseph and almost nothing about the cat.
It’s true, we don’t know the color of Schrödinger’s cat. Nor do we know its size, its gender, or its disposition. It may have been a large, docile, gray tiger-striped tabby. Or it may just as easily been a small, feisty, butterscotch colored despot. Cats come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, personalities and, of course, colors.
Here's what we do know about the cat in Schrödinger‘s experiment: It’s in a sealed box. With it is a vial of poison and a mechanism to spill the poison. The mechanism will start only if a certain event occurs, and that event is unpredictable. Finally, if the poison spills, the cat will die.
But note: The experiment was purely theoretical: There was never a real cat, any poison, or a box to put them in. It was just a mental exercise. So, no actual cats were harmed in the making of this reflection, whatever color they may or may not have been.
The purpose of Schrödinger‘s experiment was to illustrate a point: Until we open the box—and see with our own eyes—we cannot know whether the cat is alive or dead. From a physics standpoint, nothing has actually occurred ... yet. The cat is constantly either alive or dead. Until we open the box and find out for certain, the cat is in a continuous state of possibility.
Have I lost you? Hang on. We're done with the science-y stuff. What it means, in everyday terms, is this: We cannot know what we cannot know.
Anything is possible.
There are many treasures to be mined from the story of Joseph—the limits of prophecy, fractured families, the power of forgiveness, even agronomics. But for me, it's this "not knowing" that keeps me coming back to Joseph. It’s in the “not knowing” that we are like Joseph.
Despite the cryptic dreams he received as a young man, he could never have known he would become "a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt."
When it comes to what to do and say when things go wrong, Joseph is a great model for us. At each critical moment, Joseph—not knowing the future—could have chosen either way. Just like us. We know that at each challenge point, he chose to behave in a way that was pleasing to God. He did this even though there were no Ten Commandments to guide his behavior. Joseph lived long before God gave the Law to Moses.
Anyone can know right from wrong.
We, like Joseph, remain in a continuous state of possibility. That only changes when we "open the box," so to speak. Similar to Schrödinger's Cat, until we choose a course of action—in that nanosecond before our thoughts settle into our choice—we can go either way. And like Joseph, none of us can actually know our future.
But God can.
God sees all our possibilities. God can see into “the box," if you will. And, if we will allow it—if we can trust God as Joseph did—God will guide us into the best path ... and, perhaps, to undreamed-of achievements.
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PHOTO: Steve Orr
"The task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees."
—Erwin Schrödinger
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DaySpring’s Friday morning Lectionary Breakfast is a great way to start the weekend. Join us at 8:00 on Zoom** or in person at Our Breakfast Place for food, fellowship, scripture, and hijinks (is that still a word?).
See you there,
Steve
**Contact me for the Zoom link
NOTE: Zoom allows you to mute the camera & microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard.
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY & THE COMING WEEK
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38
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