You may recall that I've bought pretty much every kind of fruit in the local supermarket looking for seeds, and many of them, especially citrus, don't have seeds. This makes me angry because I don't get what I want, and I justify my anger biblically by the fact that God said for the earth to produce trees that bear fruit with seeds in it according to its kind. So there. Even God says seedless fruit is wrong. So I had shared this sordid tale of woe with one of my clients, who is also in my Bible study group. But that was a long time ago.
Last weekend, this client, we'll call her "Olga", went to Edmonton. For those not in the know, Edmonton is 1070 km from Hay River by road, so we don't go often. So "Olga" went to Edmonton, bought some oranges there, and found that the oranges had seeds. And being the sweet considerate person that she is, she remembered my orange-seed problem, and brought me back an orange. "I'm sure it will have two or three seeds," she said.
That's so sweet! So I took my orange-with-seeds-in-it home last night and I didn't have time to deal with it right away. I was a bit apprehensive, to be honest. What if it didn't have seeds in it? What if none of the seeds sprout? What if none of the trees make it to the fruit-bearing stage? I don't want to disappoint Olga. But first thing this morning, I ate my orange, and it was delicious, and it had twenty-three seeds in it. Twenty-three (23). That is a LOT of seeds.
So I washed the seeds and planted them, and then put them under my bed. Citrus, as I recall, like warmth and dark to sprout, and the lemons took a month to sprout. So now, we wait.
As I wait, I started to think what strange good fortune it is that my orange, of all the oranges in the bag, had so many seeds. Now you might think it fortuitous that Olga randomly grabbed that particular orange to give to me. But if you know anything about quantum physics, you might think that the orange did not in fact have 23 seeds in it until I opened it and observed the seeds. The orange that Olga grabbed had the same probability of seeds as any other orange. It could have been a three-seed orange. Its wavefunction did not collapse into 23 seeds until I opened it.
Now this is all well and good, but now consider that Olga and I are both Christians. I personally don't believe in praying for God to do favours for me, such as 23 seeds in an orange, but Olga does. And Olga did bless the orange when she gave it to me by saying "I hope it produces bountifully for you." And it did. And then while the orange was in my care, I kept thinking "fruit with seeds in it according to its kind", which is also a kind of prayer. So the disturbing thing here is, did the wavefunction collapse into 23 seeds because Olga and I prayed for it? Or in a non-quantum way, did Olga's hand pick the 23-seed orange for me because she had a prayerful heart?
If you're an atheist, you're thinking all this is ridiculous. And even if you're a praying Christian, you're probably well aware that you don't get what you pray for, a lot more than you do. Which is why it's so creepy when something unlikely happens after you've prayed for it. Did the Lord send me, via Olga, an orange with 23 seeds? Why would the Lord waste his time doing that? But then again, why wouldn't he? Or is "the Lord" really more akin to the Q, so that when we pray, we're actually trying to bend quantumness to our will, and sometimes we succeed?
So the moral is, not only I had an orange with 23 seeds in it, but it seems to be an unusually psychoactive orange as well. 15 years from now when my 23 orange trees bear fruit, I can become gruesomely rich selling 100% legal psychedelic oranges. BOOYA!
Last weekend, this client, we'll call her "Olga", went to Edmonton. For those not in the know, Edmonton is 1070 km from Hay River by road, so we don't go often. So "Olga" went to Edmonton, bought some oranges there, and found that the oranges had seeds. And being the sweet considerate person that she is, she remembered my orange-seed problem, and brought me back an orange. "I'm sure it will have two or three seeds," she said.
That's so sweet! So I took my orange-with-seeds-in-it home last night and I didn't have time to deal with it right away. I was a bit apprehensive, to be honest. What if it didn't have seeds in it? What if none of the seeds sprout? What if none of the trees make it to the fruit-bearing stage? I don't want to disappoint Olga. But first thing this morning, I ate my orange, and it was delicious, and it had twenty-three seeds in it. Twenty-three (23). That is a LOT of seeds.
So I washed the seeds and planted them, and then put them under my bed. Citrus, as I recall, like warmth and dark to sprout, and the lemons took a month to sprout. So now, we wait.
As I wait, I started to think what strange good fortune it is that my orange, of all the oranges in the bag, had so many seeds. Now you might think it fortuitous that Olga randomly grabbed that particular orange to give to me. But if you know anything about quantum physics, you might think that the orange did not in fact have 23 seeds in it until I opened it and observed the seeds. The orange that Olga grabbed had the same probability of seeds as any other orange. It could have been a three-seed orange. Its wavefunction did not collapse into 23 seeds until I opened it.
Now this is all well and good, but now consider that Olga and I are both Christians. I personally don't believe in praying for God to do favours for me, such as 23 seeds in an orange, but Olga does. And Olga did bless the orange when she gave it to me by saying "I hope it produces bountifully for you." And it did. And then while the orange was in my care, I kept thinking "fruit with seeds in it according to its kind", which is also a kind of prayer. So the disturbing thing here is, did the wavefunction collapse into 23 seeds because Olga and I prayed for it? Or in a non-quantum way, did Olga's hand pick the 23-seed orange for me because she had a prayerful heart?
If you're an atheist, you're thinking all this is ridiculous. And even if you're a praying Christian, you're probably well aware that you don't get what you pray for, a lot more than you do. Which is why it's so creepy when something unlikely happens after you've prayed for it. Did the Lord send me, via Olga, an orange with 23 seeds? Why would the Lord waste his time doing that? But then again, why wouldn't he? Or is "the Lord" really more akin to the Q, so that when we pray, we're actually trying to bend quantumness to our will, and sometimes we succeed?
So the moral is, not only I had an orange with 23 seeds in it, but it seems to be an unusually psychoactive orange as well. 15 years from now when my 23 orange trees bear fruit, I can become gruesomely rich selling 100% legal psychedelic oranges. BOOYA!
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