The fractal zoom reminds me of a video I saw once that zoomed into the human body into the smallest atom and how it looked quite a lot like space, then zoomed back out into space.
The only thing I can say about church is I met two of my closest friends there, sisters whom Jenna and Jess from my book are based on. Their family made mine look positively liberal-- let's just say that the things I wrote about Jenna and Jess's family in the book were not far off from reality minus having a cool aunt like Harriet. But if they did have an aunt like Harriet their family would definitely have treated her the way they did in the book. I think what separates my own parents and some of my extended family who subscribe to the Christian faith is that their love for people is genuine and they're much less judgmental because of it.
That equation makes sense to me as well.