The seventh in a series of seven sermons for the season of Lent
[“Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.” T. S. Eliot, “East Coker.” From the second of his Four Quartets.]
In 1939 the US began the top-secret Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. In 1942 Manhattan Project chemists at the University of Chicago, under the leadership of Enrico Fermi, set up a makeshift laboratory under the Stagg Field stadium. One of the things they did was take two pieces of plutonium and mechanically, by hand with a Geiger counter, bring them together to see what would happen, to see the Geiger counter increase, to see how close they could get before something big happened. It was called “twisting the tail of the dragon.” Would it blow up the stadium? Chicago? Or a chain reaction which would blow up everything? The thrill of being right on the edge makes life meaningful and exciting. What is implied is that life itself is otherwise mundane, boring, and meaningless.
