The earth hath bubbles, as the water has and these are of them. Whither have they vanished? ~~ William Shakespeare

 

When I read this week about six people from Missouri, four adults and two children – 

read about the metaphysical-and-quantum-physics-spouting cult leader spinning chaos

from a prison cell, proclaiming his targeted victims “carbonated beings,” I couldn’t help

but think of Banquo’s quote from Macbeth. Because those six people, like ginger ale fizz 

and the three weird sisters, all vanished into thin air.

Kind of like me at sixteen – a victim of a cult, but a victim in reverse. My father, a chaos

physicist, teaching the science of surprise, the science of the nonlinear and unpredictable, 

while mourning the loss of a father, found evangelical fundamentalism, fusing love of

subatomic principles with an unbending rendering of scripture thanks to a ramrod patriarchal penis-head

stirring butterfly wings with bible verses, and unspooling

a teenaged typhoon in Tennessee. All because I refused to walk as a sheep. Me, who used to 

trail after my father like the dust trail on a comet, shimmering in his presence, preening as he 

presented to my fifth-grade class all the mysteries of our brave overhanging firmament, fretted with

golden fire and planetary motion, his faith never faltering, even as his faith failed me. I learned the

science of surprise, how lines of scripture can become prison bars

destroying free will and families alike. The mother of one of the missing mothers in Missouri, when

interviewed, says she’s “holding on by her faith” to the hope that her daughter and grandchild will be

found. Ironically, that’s exactly how her daughter vanished – by holding on by her faith. As did my

father’s daughter — his faith a soothing balm for the ache of a father’s loss in his heart, which then created the ache of a father’s loss in my own.

The flutter of faith’s metaphysical wing – so fair and foul a thing I have not seen. 

 

 

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