Brigadoon

If you missed it, just a few days ago, February 22nd, was Enchanting Day in celebration of the Scottish legend of Brigadoon.

"The legend of Brigadoon is the story of a mythical village in the Scottish Highlands.  The village became enchanted centuries ago remaining unchanged and invisible to the outside world except for one special day every hundred years when it could be seen and even visited by outsiders.  This enchanted day is spent in joy and celebration".

A story like that had no choice but to be made into a musical, "Brigadoon", written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, who later made another legend - that of King Arthur - into one of the most successful musicals, "Camelot".

{Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) and Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson) are on a hunting trip in Scotland and become lost in the woodlands. They happen upon Brigadoon, a miraculously blessed village that rises out of the mists every hundred years for only a day. (This was done so that the village would never be changed or destroyed by the outside world.)} 

The other more intriguing version of the legend is about a village who'd wake up one day, go about  celebrating the new day  until nightfall, then they'd go to bed. However, the next time they wake up  the following morning, a hundred years  of "our time" had elapsed. Of course, the villagers don't know that the next "outsiders" who might come around are generations away from the last ones who saw them last.   

In today's vernacular,   "What's up with all that?", Brigadoon!

Let me detour for a bit.

A man one day found the fabled magic lamp.  As stories like this go, he had no choice but to rub on it. Truth be told he just wanted to make sure the lamp was something of value as to be made of precious metal, like gold or silver.  Rough in demeanor, impertinent and insolently rude, he was none too pleased to see a genie, clad only in loin cloth, appear. The Genie, with little variation from his fabled behavior, as the story goes, he predictably offered the man one wish.  The man, in his usual disparaging manner of speaking, said, "So, you tell me I freed you from a thousand years of bondage. I'm sure a thousand, even a million years is just like a second to you because here you are apparently un-aged and unchanged. And a million dollars is just  like a dollar to you, right?"  The genie nodded in agreement.  "Aha!", said the jubilant man, "So why don't you give me a hundred million dollars".  The genie promptly replied, "Sure, give me a second."

Well, let me introduce a new term - scalar perspective. I just made that up but here's the definition.  Our perspective on everything is all based on the scale of one thing relative to another. A small fish in a small pond would seem better off than a larger fish in the ocean. A one eyed man is king in a village of the blind.  Someone with a dollar is far richer relative to a penniless beggar. Isn't it better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of an elephant?

So, I again bring in my favorite microorganism (from the prior blog to this) - the amoeba. 

Johnny goes to bed one evening. On a wet dish on the night table with leftover snack he was too lazy to clear away was a colony of amoeba  observing him. By the time he woke up in the morning, multiple generations of amoeba later, a fresh colony was there to greet him.  Also, a foul morning breath is brought on by a colony of bacteria far removed from a handful of them stuck between Johnny's teeth or gums the night before.  Several amoebic and bacterial lifetimes to one night of slumber; scalar perspective - it's all relative, isn't it?

Does the concept of Brigadoon still look too fanciful or outrageous?

First, just a little bit of physics; just a short, little uncomplicated bit.  Elementary subatomic particles live for just a mere trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

On the other hand, trees can live for a hundred years but the oldest one - The Great Basin Bristlecone pine - is dated to be 5,000 years old. The tree was a sapling right about when one of the pyramids in Egypt was completed, and perhaps over 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.

That tree, if it is tuned to what had gone on around the world since, had seen the growth of the world population, wars and pestilences, the shifting powers of conquerors and dictators, despots and notable leaders, beheld the plight of the enslaved and grimaced at the cruelty of the enslavers, and today is still a witness to what is going on in the Baltics, primarily what is happening in Ukraine and everywhere else.  Time may have stood still for that tree as generations upon generations of people had come and gone.

The tree, remaining standing still at one place, had witnessed the same theaters of war, protagonists of victorious conquerors and subjugated  peoples who fought over the same territories for centuries of repeated lessons unlearned, set aside and ignored. Of course, a hundred centuries is but a millionth fraction of a fraction of the age of the universe. 

The Genie had been out of the bottle, or appeared after a cloud from a lamp in so many ways but had man wished more nobly other than wealth and pleasure?  Had man wished of the Genie for peace and unity?  Or, not enough time had yet materialized for lessons of history to be learned, at last?

The concept of an Eternal God, a Being whose eternal clock has been ticking with no beginning nor end, is no longer the product of our ancestor's superstitions but one that transcends the concept of time. This will require an explanation.  There is one.

The idea that the passage or flow of time is all relative is no longer in dispute.  Photons of light do not experience the passage of time. A photon of light does not age.  Not even by one second. Time and time again, no pun intended, Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity has been proven at every turn - time slows down for any object as its speed increases. And, time will stand still for particles of light. Lest we forget, it is always one relative to another.

Light, ancient readers would have quickly noted, was introduced immediately in the third verse of the book of Genesis, before all the other creations were fulfilled.  Is there another meaning - a deeper one - of, "Thus spake Jesus again unto them, saying I am the Light of the world .." John 8:12, KJV. 

Is there hope of a Brigadoon, miraculously blessed that may no longer  change or be destroyed?

I threw in a lot of things here but that is in keeping with the goal -  "to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber".