N: NORMAL CURVE

The familiar bell-shaped curve we call the “normal” is responsible for a lot, both in science and in my life. The normal curve was not developed, but rather discovered as the way things are more times than not. It is the way nature varies, or fails to vary--THE fractal of probability, showing up with so much regularity that its usefulness is unquestioned. Most of the statistics we use in science come from the realization that things—whether they be repeated measurements in an experiment or naturally occurring things like height, weight and strength--cluster around a mean with equal variation in two directions. When we speak of variation from the norm, we speak of standard deviations away from the mean. The fattest part of the curve, one standard deviation away on either side, accounts for 68% of the data and, when we move out two standard deviations, we include 95.45%. In science, data is usually reported with a “confidence level” (often 95%) which means the researcher thinks his stuff is under the fat part of the bell-shaped curve but also must acknowledge that there are indeed those little deviant, variant, odd ends out there. (I hope that you can visualize a normal curve in your mind, for this whole post will make so much more sense if so!) Statistically speaking, this powerful math function allowed us to give definition, and literally a shape, for the concept of NORMAL, which is amazing, really, if you let yourself think about it. I, clearly, have let myself think about it—way too many times!. I am going to turn a corner now sharply and tell you a bit of my love-hate relationship with the concept of normal. Brace yourself: it’s about to get painfully personal up in here. (I guess I’m bracing myself, for it’s my own soul that I am baring here in the vast unknown of cyberspace!) I.Q. is a phenomenon that is normally distributed throughout the population. My mother was a professional educator in a pioneering public program in the early 60’s and had adjunct access to our local university’s education department. When, as a preschooler, I began to read words in her graduate school textbooks, she took me to the local university to be tested. I didn’t know I was being tested: I honestly interpreted it as a day celebrating me, and I remember it with startling clarity and real joy, I think. They asked me questions and let me tell what I knew! What could be better? It was a day built around my knowledge and my fascination with the world—a day I have been trying to re-create ever since! (It might have also been the day I fell in love with performing, but that’s another story.) When the letter came diagnosing my condition, it provided my mother with a Stanford-Binet I.Q. score of 170 for me, BUT, one of the child psychologists in her circle instructed her that it would be better for her NOT to tell me about the high score, so that “I would not feel different.” Doing the best she could to obey the “experts,” my mother hid the letter in a drawer and there it stayed until I was 25 years old and searching for a document at her home. By that time, I had already been through several iterations of deep existential searching, in which I had more or less cried out to the heavens, “Why do I think about things so differently?” without the help of the answer provided in the letter. In retrospect, the letter explained a lot. My place on the NORMAL curve wasn’t in the fat bell shape in the middle, even if I wanted it to be. I won’t regale you here with tales of my tumble through childhood—times when it would have helped to say, “No, Perrianne, this mind you have is a FEATURE not a DEFECT! Even though the kids are laughing at you now for the question you asked, who you are is NOT “ab-normal”! I will also skip the vast (but sort of adorable) sociological research I embarked upon from an early age in an effort to teach myself to make conversation with others—which I did do successfully! (I put my intelligence to work to learn how to connect, and that’s been lovely and miraculous. I daresay, I might be genuinely good at it! It’s an art form I truly learned to enjoy!) I am my own version of NORMAL—a version that draws swirly circles when other people draw straight simple lines—a version that sees eternity in a grain of sand—a version that matters for what I can see and add to the hologram of truth! I have lived my life as a unique version of a “spiritual academic”, like a female cleric/scholar/thinker/(?), but I have done it rooted in a church environment. Though our church and our network are pressing in to do it different (demonstrating true Kingdom inclusiveness), the Bible Belt of America has seemed at times to enjoy whacking off the ends of the normal curve, refusing to give much room for “deviation” and viewing few variances as “standard”. It’s been a wild ride trying to obey the many injunctions to “be yourself” that came from church people while navigating the fact that the “self” I am seemed to them quite, quite unique. (I am blogging through the alphabet now about science, but I could equally do it about Greek words, art history, or even postmodern self-help words. The limiting factor is not my thoughts or inspirations, but rather the presence of potential readers!) It’s a blessing and a curse, or so it seems. One day near mid-life I was pondering my spot on the normal distribution (and by pondering I mean lamenting). I was wishing for the crowded fat part of the curve where people hang out; I was wishing I connected better and more quickly with my communication; I was, probably wishing to be different, which I don’t even believe in doing! I was rethinking my lifelong sociological research and resenting my litany of “fitting in” mechanisms”! All of a sudden, in my imagination, God performed a profoundly elegant transformation: It was as if he took that black bell-shaped line which had been authorized to declare the shape of “normal”, and He rotated it for me 90 degrees! Now from above (His view, if we go 3D about things), I could immediately see that the normal curve is just another line! I am not afraid of a mere line—that’s just a collection of infinite dots! The concept lost its power to make me feel different, for I was just another glorious point on the line! The curve lost its power to equate FREQUENCY with ACCEPTANCE! You can’t tell the difference in the view from above! That simple visual aid settled me back into the RELATIONSHIP that issued the uniqueness in the first place and reminded me of the whole point of living—expressing that RELATIONSHIP in an authentic—personal and unique—way! The intention of the child psychologist to help me feel “OK” about myself was finally accomplished through a wildly circuitous thought-route that had the divine fingerprint all over it! If I could issue one grand apology on behalf of the whole body of Christ, I would. I don’t feel authorized to do so by any “normal” (fat bit in the center) definition of leadership status. But, I am authorized by the fact that I have struggled with simplistic statements of normative Christianity long enough to speak from the far places at the end of the curve---places where I now know God also dances! I hear things differently. The cut-and-dried to me has a thousand rough fractal considerations in it, making it ever so far from cut-and-dried. And in my uniqueness, I have found a God—a Father—who loves me like I am?—yes, but more: who MADE ME on purpose like I am so that He could share parts of Himself with me, joining me often and regularly in my swirly dances of questioning! When HE says to me, “Be yourself!” HE MEANS IT! Sometimes, the church has been guilty of building a platform that fits the curious description in Isaiah 28:20, “The bed is too short to stretch out on, the blanket too narrow to wrap around you.” Forgive us. God is not this “bed” or this “blanket”. His love is spacious and NOT “norm-based”.