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Spiritual Living

Clouds and Clocks

"Of Clouds and Clocks" was the title of one of Sir Karl Popper's most famous lectures. It was given in honor of Arthur Holly Compton, one of the first physicists to embrace Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and other concepts relating to physical indeterminism. Clouds symbolize physical systems that are highly erratic and unpredictable. At the other extreme are physical systems that are uniform, orderly, and highly predictable, that is, clocks.

Popper's thesis was simple: life is more like clouds than clocks. In making this claim he was declaring his independence from some mighty big names. If clockwork precision was on the right and fickle cloudliness on the left, Sir Isaac Newton taught that everything belonged on the right. In fact, for Newton, clouds were clocks. It was the Newtonian view of the clockwork universe that dominated the modern world.

Only a few spoke for the clouds. The American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce was the first to break ranks with the Newtonians and dared to dissent that, to some degree, all clocks are clouds. In fact, for Peirce "only clouds exist, though clouds of very different cloudiness."

The clock regulates our offices and homes. We hang it like a cross in some of the most prominent places in our homes, and we wear it on our bodies. Yet it is futile to expect a day to go "like clockwork," Popper claimed, since any day's horizons are as variable as the clouds in the sky. We are at the mercy of the unknown.

Can you surrender to life's surprises? Can you entertain epiphanies that come out of the clouds? Or will you attempt to wrest control out of chaos and make clocks out of clouds?

Life does not go according to plan. Long-range plans, even short-range plans, are exercises in turning clouds into clocks. If we cannot know what one day may bring forth, how can we lock in plans for a week, a month, or a year?

A whole-soul experience is not an "in control" life; it's an out-of-control life. Disciples of Jesus don't want the upper hand. God gets the upper hand. All of life is placed within God's control. Too much of the simplicity movement is less about simplifying your life than about bringing life under your control.

Finding peace is not getting control of life.
Finding peace is trusting God even when life is out of control.

Excerpted from Learn to Dance the Soul Salsa by Leonard Sweet PhD (This book is available to purchase through our online bookstore.)