Brainwaves

This past Tuesday my pastor friend and I drove east from Pensacola on an alternate route across the Panhandle. It took us over an hour and a half to reach our destination: twelve hundred acres of farmland where the land was divided into huge fields occupied by a multitude of black angus cattle and with each individual tract naturally enclosed by Mother Nature. In Kentucky we have “cricks”. Here, a stream, maybe 15-20 feet wide in some places, zig-zagged over the whole area, so that no matter where you stepped into the trees, the sound of its flow met you once again. My buddy had brought his four-wheeler and the sight of this old man hanging on for dear life as we bounced from deer stand to deer stand was, no doubt, hilarious. At each stop, though, we’d walk into the woods a few hundred feet and he’d scout the ground for tracks before tossing corn seed to entice wild turkeys to a future dinner he had in mind. Me? I was just enjoying the scenery and the solitude, hoping the rattlesnakes were still in hibernation…………….

Dan was continually reminiscing about past encounters with 8-point bucks and gobblers that have “eyes in the back of their heads”. He spoke of once shooting a couple of wild boars. An avid hunter he is, but our conversation bore much evidence that his love for such activity was much more than just a matter of “putting meat on the table”. Many the time, with his target in range, some inner awe of God’s creation held his finger from the trigger. Rather than food, the reason for the expedition evolved into fellowship. Worship. Manna from on high, not from the bush. Yeah. I remember discovering it was really rabbits I was stalking through the underbrush; it was escape. Hearing the sound of the dogs while standing there in the otherwise stillness was therapy for the soul. Your mind was clear and free to explore the universe. I sold my gun and began to buy my meat from Kroger’s; but, without the “excuse”, the goal was somehow lost over the years. Finding a quiet place became more and more difficult…………….

In the summer, I take to the high ground around here. There’s a reservoir a mile or so up the road and a “cliff” I climb a level or so at a time. Heaven help me if the heart ever gives out on the upward go, but it’s easier to assault the hill than to deal with the numerous rottweillers and pitbulls loosely chained in the neighborhood. I quit walking around here all together. Get to the top of that incline, though, and the reward is worth the effort. Nobody but you and the Almighty sitting together on a grassy stretch overlooking the valley. You can see for miles; and as a gentle breeze washes over you, there’s an inner connection accomplished without even bowing your head. Prayer is no struggle. The same condition, of course, can be found while driving, alone, down the highway, but it’s a little hard to release the wheel and get lost in Him. During winter, though, peace is where you find it. A back bedroom. A corner in the basement. Bundled up in a warm jacket, outside for a few moments looking up at the stars……………….

In my mind, right now, I can hear the babble of that brook…………

With a granddaughter's wedding requiring our presence in the Florida Panhandle the first part of June and plans already made to take the younger ones to Disneyland in August, Spring Break was intended to be no more than a week off from school. The sudden invitation to visit our pastor and his family in Pensacola for a few days, however, was too tempting, so I rented the Dodge version of a hot-rod hearse and drove south for twelve hours this past Saturday . The church service Sunday morning, the prayer meeting Monday evening, and being with people you love justified the journey. Dan and Kathy's heart goes far beyond opening their home unto others. Their life, for the many years I have known them, has long been invested into the world around them. Feeding the hungry. Assisting the oppressed. Reaching the down and out. Their small congregation is as multi-ethnic as any I've ever encountered and their agenda has nothing to do with building bigger barns for personal accumulation. What comes into their bank account goes right back out into meeting the needs of others. Black. Korean. Hispanic. White. Business men and ex-junkies. The guy who works at Wal-Mart, the woman who sells insurance, and a pew full of fellows recently released from prison, living at a half-way house. Young. Old. Ministry takes place. Worship just happens..............

I realize, of course, not all are called to be a Paul Brand or a Mother Teresa. Community in the Bronx is somewhat different than in a small, rural town in the middle of Kansas, but the task set before any believer remains basically the same. A person can do no more than give himself unto the voice of God and those circumstances set before him. Christianity was never meant to be shoving our individual, doctrinal version of the Gospel down the other guy's throat. Faith isn't defined by our ability to pray down personal prosperity from heaven. That message rings false. Void of His heart. Emptied of His humility. The Almighty's word unto us cannot be reduced to mere ink upon parchment, which we in turn define for ourselves. We do not create Him. The Bible is either a surgical sword wielded by the Spirit, creating life in the process, or it is no more than any other book, balanced by my mind and subject to my interpretation thereof. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Hurt me; you're going to regret it. A man can build a multitude of erroneous doctrinal foundations from its pages and accomplish no more than life as usual. Make me, though, a vessel for the reality of a resurrected Christ to fill and overflow, and Jesus walks this earth in all that He is. Perform a continual cleansing of our arteries, re-new our heart on a regular basis, and we might just maintain a working relationship with that condition...............

There’s an old adage that suggests with age comes wisdom. When you consider that senility and a half dozen other conditions that, in one way or another, return you to your original point of entry also appear on that end of the spectrum, there’s room for debate, I think, about the supposition. More likely that one, hopefully, learns a few things along the way. Experience is a great teacher; but, of course, some absorb the lesson a wee slower than others. They tell me that when I was quite young, every time a lass on the other side asked, I would stick my finger through a hole in the fence around our yard, knowing full well that she had bitten my finger on previous occasions. Whether a light bulb finally went off in my head, or not, that the scenario would serve as a conditioner for my mistrust of most people, I don’t know; but, to this day I believe only whom and what has proven itself unto me. When the author of “Show Me God”, then, states how he’s not advising that we “build our faith on rationalism, but merely that we build our lives on a faith that is rational”, he’s talking right up my alley…………

The term “skeptic” is derived from a Greek word meaning “to examine”; and while, among Christians, such description appears to be reserved for those who are too thick-headed to accept Scripture for what it says, it yet remains the Bible, itself, encourages us more than once to evaluate all things. We are, in fact, not to be taken in neither by deceitful teachings, human traditions, nor our emotions. And upon just what foundation are we to rest any edifice erected through a relationship with Him? Ask that of any member of the Body and the answer will likely be “chapter and verse”. Yet that element will usually be determined by whatever image their particular herd has carved out of such source; and should the storms of life ever present question as to the reliability of that which we, ourselves have created, anything that doesn’t add up to prayer request fulfilled is simply labeled as either lack of faith on our part or wisdom on His. Hang in there and you, too, may one day reach the spiritual level of your mentors. Just don’t rock the boat. All things come to those who believe…………

I am not insinuating we all, as one man said, “run out the church door and become a bunch of religious free-lancers”; but, as I write this, I’m reminded how Jesus sent the disciples forth with “no bag for the journey”, not even so much as sandals and an extra change of underwear. They were only to lean upon the Holy Ghost, discovering in the process the reality of HIS presence. In approaching sixty-five with what will soon be three and a half decades in this walk, I can only tell you that picture resembles my own experience. No where along the way was I ever permanently transformed into some super saint given free will to display my genius at swinging a sword. Life in Christ has been a constant, humbling reminder of His grace manifesting itself again and again, giving realization that His word remained true. You stumble. You hear His voice. You pick yourself up and follow the Wind. How that can be reduced to a “one-size-fits-all” uniform packaged by the local ecclesiastical community of your choice is beyond me. We are “one” only in submission to that which He has restored unto us…………

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord, your God, is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these”………

“The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation…His religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”…..Albert Einstein, theoretical physicist

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron…The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”……Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist

“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”…Sir Fred Hoyle, astrophysicist

“Method and object can no longer be separated. The scientific world-view has ceased to be a scientific view in the true sense of the word. There is a higher power, not influenced by our wishes, which finally decides and judges.”...Werner Heisenberg, chief founder of quantum mechanics

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”…Robert Jastrow, astronomer

“All I want is reality. Show me God. Tell me what He is really like. Help me to understand why life is the way it is and how I can experience it more fully and with greater joy. I don’t want empty promises. I want the real thing. And I’ll go wherever I find that truth system”……..Lisa Baker, age 20, quoted as one who typifies her age group, disenchanted with religion while still seeking “the answer”, in George Barna’s “The Invisible Generation: Baby Busters”

The book containing the above quote was copyrighted @ 1995, but George Barna’s reference to it was no doubt somewhat earlier. Whether the element of exactly when it was spoken contributes in any way to the young lady’s sentiments is probably irrelevant. To my thinking, I find such expression reflective of most of us at one time or another. Trouble is: we tend to look for those things that suggest achieving happiness through their possession and, while we don’t want the false, we also aren’t all that willing to wait or work hard to gain what we do want. In spiritual terms, then, God becomes merely a commodity we, ourselves, create and try to “sell” to everybody else. If not our particular version of the Bible, then our idea of what constitutes righteousness. Sometimes just our individual community. Often all three. And somewhere in the journey, a resurrected Christ is either restricted to the limits of our perception, or blown out of proportion by our imagination and our ego. Surely, however, if the Creator has indeed inserted Himself into whom we are as a people, then He ought to be quite capable, via His own power, of manifesting evidence of such indwelling. All we need do is “go with the flow”………..

Indeed, it surprised me, after having read her revelation of “relaxing” rather than “freezing” in one’s pursuit of the Almighty within nature, to discover Annie Dillard presenting divine encounter as being somewhat akin to the liberty given in Exodus. “Just a glimpse, Moses,” she spoke as if directly to him. “A cleft in the rock here, a mountain-top there; and rest is denial and longing.” As she saw it, “You’ve got to stalk everything”. Everything about God, that is, including the Spirit; and luck was being able to catch Him “by the tail” long enough to shout something in His ear before He wrest away. Even then, you might just find yourself left with a shrunken sinew in the hollow of your thigh. If that sounds as if the adventure always demands physical chase, though, she also makes known how any success usually involves patience and an ability to endure. Like the deer hunter, she sits “on a bridge as on Pisgah or Sinai,” and is “both waiting becalmed and banging with all my will, calling like a child beating on a door: “Come on out! I know You’re in there!” By that last statement, then, perhaps she perceives the possibility of somehow blending her hunger for Him with faith in His promise…………

That the author should have included, within these same pages, an eye-opening announcement put forth in 1927 by a highly respected astronomer, Werner Heisenberg, was interesting to me. According to Ms. Dillard, this fellow “pulled out the rug and our whole understanding of the universe toppled and collapsed”. Scientists supposedly “perfected their instruments and methods just enough to whisk away the crucial veil and what stood revealed was the Cheshire Cat’s grin”. The Principle of Indeterminacy says in effect that you cannot know both a particle’s velocity and position. You can guess statistically what any batch of electrons might do, but you cannot predict the career of any one particle. They seem to be as free as dragonflies. It’s not that we lack sufficient information in the matter; rather that by the time you calculate one, the other has changed. What they now know for sure is simply that there’s no knowing. As Heisenberg put it, “There is a higher power not influenced by our wishes which finally decides and judges.” Or, as I put it, what He has sworn unto us is a “connection” between us that yet remains governed by His determination. In that I can rest and know peace…………….

This IS an alien. It invaded my home about two years ago and won't go away... 

This is not an alien. Just my granddaughter swimming in the pool last summer. 

“Can I stay still? How still? It is astonishing how many people cannot, or will not, hold still. I could not, or would not, hold still for thirty minutes inside, but at the creek I slow down, center down, empty. I am not excited; my breathing is slow and regular. In my brain I am not saying, Muskrat! Muskrat! There! I am saying nothing. If I must hold a position, I do not freeze. If I freeze, locking my muscles, I will tire and break. Instead of going rigid, I go calm. I center down wherever I am; I find a balance and repose. I retreat-not inside myself, but outside myself, so that I am a tissue of senses. Whatever I see is plenty, abundance. I am the skin of water the wind plays over; I am petal, feather, stone”………..Annie Dillard, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

Working with elementary school kids is entertaining to say the least. They show up for every class with no pencil, having dropped the one you just gave them somewhere in the hall. While they know exactly where to find some picture they’ve drawn, their homework is another matter all together. It is hidden somewhere within a binder that appears to be occupied by a family of rats. Oblivious to their own failures, they’ll nonetheless point you to their classmate’s miscues on a moment’s notice. After two hours of walking four Fifth Grade students through a math placement test yesterday morning, I was shocked when the teacher later informed me of one little girl’s efforts suddenly ceasing halfway down the form provided for answers. We had attacked the exam as a group, waiting until each child gave assurance of having recorded their solution to the problems. This young lady, the most vocal in the room as to how easy she found each enigma, simply drifted into her own space at one point and no longer bothered to transfer anything from her scratch paper to the state’s ABC sheet…………

The autistic boy with whom I work for a couple of hours each day, though, is in a league of his own. Everything is yet a game to him. Kindergarten isn’t yet completely out of his system. Stepping into Third Grade this year meant leaving some things behind. A “security belt”, for example, that he’s always had to bend and play with much as another toddler might like a crayon or a toy truck. We’ve weaned him to lanyards, sit with him in regular classes, and attempt to drill recognition of alphabet and numerical sequencing. He and I have repeated the same exercise over and over for nearly seven months now. Only recently has he shown any evidence of remembering “six” is a vital member of the first ten digits. Have him put images of those digits into proper sequence and you get different success rates each time you attempt it. Ask his cooperation in associating group count with images and you get random shots you swear are orchestrated merely to test your patience. Then he looks at you with this impish smile, angelic lifting of the eye-brows, and simple pronunciation of “Hi!” that melts your heart……………

I’ve often wondered if our relationship with the Almighty isn’t pretty much the same. Who among us hasn’t lost focus at one time or another? Who is it that has their life so in order that there’s never any need for a bit of spring cleaning now and then? Me? All too often I’ve found myself spinning my wheels and going nowhere with nothing left to do but look up and rest in His grace. In Dillard’s words above, then, I envision a likeness unto seeking a manifestation of God’s presence. Her search may be in another arena, but there’s, nonetheless, some good advice in her solution to the matter. It could well be the roles are reverse. In her scenario it is the muskrat that is prone to run and hide in the shadows. In mine, it’s the other way around. Indeed, I’m convinced that the Spirit is willing to meet with us, minister to us, speak with us...whenever we’re willing to slow down and attempt a fulfilling of her formula. Maybe one day we’ll learn the lesson? Maybe the lesson is learning we are but dumb sheep? Lead me, Jesus; lead me. Autistic, I'm not; but I am rather dense……………

The other weekend, schools all over Kentucky held academic contests somewhat akin to the T.V. show, “Jeopardy”. Take away Alex Trebec, the suspense music, give the kids a buzzer to beep in, and you’ve got the idea. Beth and I drove to Winchester to watch the grandson’s team take second place in the competition making them eligible to proceed to the Regionals. It came as no surprise to me, in testing my own knowledge against these Fifth Grade warriors, that they should beat me four out of five rounds. Their young minds were honed for battle and operating at a much quicker pace than my own. Time after time, before I could line up the equation, they had it solved. Mathematics. Science. History. Current events. No “let’s talk about this”. Either you knew the correct answer or you didn’t. Some people think theology is much the same; and heaven help you if your reply to their theory is wrong…………

With no desire to include my friend among such thick-headed religionists, I would nonetheless like to address a recent post of his regarding a term that pertains to disagreement over doctrinal tenets. “Heresy”, he asserts, “at its core is simply a difference of opinion”, but one that “stands against the majority”. Majority being both traditional AND orthodox view of things. He admits that not all such rebellion is necessarily incorrect, but suggests that the “true” version is a form of “moral quicksand” capable of getting you in trouble with “the Big Guy Upstairs”. Indeed, he separates the “benign” from the “damnable” by whether you merely part company with another denomination’s interpretation of Scripture or whether you walk away from what the Institution, as a whole, believes to be “Gospel”. That speaks to me of doing the same thing with the Body that we’ve done with the Book. Infallible, we’re not…………..

Let’s be honest. The only place where the ecclesiastical community, as a whole, appears to be unified is in Jesus being, in one way or another, the focus of Christianity. If you take one step, however, in any direction, the entire scenario begins to get blurry. Immediately, we each have our own personal definition of “saved”, complete with a guarantee of how our particular slant will get you through the Pearly Gates. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Only God knows for sure; and, so far, I’m unaware of any incident where His wrath has singled anybody out for getting the message garbled. No; heresy, it seems to me, is a word reserved for humanity. Blasphemy might be another matter; but there, again, we’re getting into my definition versus yours and in the end, if truth be told, judgment won’t belong to either of us. Surely it will be He Who looks upon the heart that will have the last say; and I can live with that……………..

Celebrities have never been a category in which I might excel should I ever attempt “Jeopardy”. Some names I recognize, but anyone younger than Harrison Ford is merely somebody I’ve bumped into along the way. There was at least a ten-year period in the seventies when I didn’t “do” movies, period; and Christopher Reeves, therefore, is more familiar to me via news events after his accident than any accomplishment beforehand. His wife, Dana, held my respect. You give credit where credit is due; and there’s no denying the example these two set for us. Yet when a television reporter spoke the other day, in regard to her untimely death, of life not being “fair” to her, I turned to my wife and asked where it is written that we’re all supposed to get an evenly-meted, favorable slice of the pie in the over-all scheme of things. Sad, it is; but a lot of people have known worse………….

Is it because we live in a land with “liberty and justice for all” that we are so quick to assume there should be this sense of balance in what comes to us on a daily basis? You spill a hot cup of coffee on yourself in McDonald’s, you get yourself a lawyer and sue. I heard yesterday that there’s now a case in court concerning a father who wanted the baby aborted. She didn’t. Why should he have to pay child support? There’s a young fellow in Texas serving ten years because, at the age of seventeen, he had a sexual encounter with a fifteen-year old. Archaic law, they say, in an era where such activity has become the norm for young people. In the Bible, a devastated Job once tried to approach God in such judicial manner and only discovered his original attitude was the correct one. If you’re looking for answers from the Almighty, you meet Him in your heart, not in court…………..

There are those who might question a friend’s recent post that speaks of viewing Jesus in feminine form upon the Cross. Personally, I not only understand, but find it in accordance with Scripture as a whole. In dying for the sins “of the world”, the Savior took upon Himself not only the wretch that I am, but also the wounds and afflictions committed unto me by the actions of others; and, indeed, if we can accept that latter part, then being crucified “with” Christ takes on multiple meaning. He is one with us in our suffering. We are made one with Him in His ability to forgive. Healing is made possible. I lost my father when I was eighteen. He would have been forty-one less than four months. Having survived the battlefields of Italy during WWII, he died when a fellow worker accidentally dropped a wrench from the rafters. I blamed God for a long time…………

“Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear, Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year. In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. How do you measure, measure a year in a life?”….While I admit to not yet having devoured the complete DVD of “Rent”, this opening number is stuck in my heart as well as my head. I actually lay in bed last night, ALL night, with the above lyrics rolling around in my brain. In one place, that last question is stretched to ask: “In truths that she learned, or in times that he cried? In bridges he burned, or the way that she died?” I wonder sometimes, I really do, how little we know of each other. So quick to judge. So busy in our own mess…………..

On my way out the door this morning I paused to listen to the news announce a local 23-year old mother’s arrest. Her crime was abandoning two small infants to the baby-sitting abilities of her oldest child, age five. Her argument for doing so was a need to “hustle” money to purchase more formula to feed them. Me? I’m wondering where her Welfare funds had disappeared that she should be so destitute, but when the story revealed police had found ample supply of drugs inside her home, that mystery was solved. Discovering a solution to such sad state of affairs in its entirety is another matter, though. It’s easy enough to throw stones. Easy to simply take the kids away from her. But does that really cure anything? This seems to me a disease devouring our country; and, while I wouldn’t tell you I have any answers, neither can I believe it right to merely shake my head, condemn her, and walk on down the road………….

Sunday, my pastor began a series of sermons that dealt with the final words of Christ that were spoken from the Cross. The first of the seven statements has stayed with me the last few days. Ridiculed, tortured, and lifted in shame before the multitude, Jesus pleaded forgiveness for all from His Father, reasoning that “they know not what they do”. Surely that latter part describes humanity as a whole and goes beyond a prayer for those few who offended Him that day. Who is there among us who isn’t limited in our understanding of the big picture, who isn’t hindered, in any attempt to gain it, by our emotions and our passions? Even in trying to do right, we miss the mark all too often, snared by faulty vision and insufficient will power to meet the occasion. Hopefully, we learn as we go; but part of that process involves more than merely excusing our weaknesses. We need Him; and we need each other. No man is an island………….

Yesterday morning, when I entered the Fifth Grade math class, the other fellow who is presently assisting with a few slow learners pulled me aside. The teacher, on her maiden voyage this year, is, no doubt, “in her element” as the one selected to unravel such subject to the kids. She keeps the overhead lights turned off, illuminating the room, instead, with a multitude of various lamps. Pinks cones here. Yellow triangles there. All symmetrically situated in an attempt to “balance” the work area. Indeed, she admits to such organization being her nature. The “fellow” that I referred to, however, just happens to be an older gentleman, in fact, a previous principal of the school, and, while very amiable, seems nonetheless a bit puzzled by her methods. On this occasion, she was about to utilize a television cartoon clip to introduce the world of three-dimension; and the plot to Edwin Abbott’s “Flatland” just was apparently a little too deep for him to grasp. A Sphere suddenly steps into a TWO-dimensional society where inhabitants are classified by their shape. Lawyers are squares; doctors, hexagons; and everyday people but circles. Panic! Fear! Run for the hills! I don’t know about the children, but I loved it…………

Last night, then, while the wife entertained herself with “American Idol”, continued journey into Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” was more in line with my own idea of relaxation. Strangely, in returning to my point of departure, I discovered the author now trying to defend her belief that, while the enigma may never be solved, one comes closer to enlightenment by examining the bigger picture in its intrinsic parts. “Were the Earth as smooth as a ball bearing,” she wrote, “it might be beautiful seen from another planet, as the rings of Saturn are; but here we live and move. We wander up and down the banks of the creek. We ride a railway through the Alps and the landscape shifts and changes. Were the Earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well. We would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture, and lapse into a dreamless sleep. Because we are living people, though, and because we are on the receiving end of beauty, another element necessarily enters the question. The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp, matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space. Death is the hurtling shuttle.” I took a copy today to the math teacher…………..

The “real” story here, however, took place at Wednesday evening Bible study. The pastor had walked us right back to our previous subject of “tongues”, opening the door for anyone to comment. I sat listening to another member of staff tell of his baptism into the experience and then reneged on my decision to just keep quiet. My offering stirred another heart. Then another; and another. Each one different from the one that preceded it. Indeed, one man referred to his Methodist upbringing, his Pentecostal “dunking” in earlier years, and now his having “grown” to where he no longer needed anything but “faith” to sustain him. Our shepherd, who had earlier demonstrated his ability to simply “slip into glossalia” whenever and wherever, confessed to being the only “tree in the forest” who once refused to fall at one of those meetings where the Spirit supposedly so flows through the congregation. “Strange”, I thought, “to sit in such a gathering where unity was not in our personal view of a doctrinal tenet we held to be true, but rather in our common commitment to Him and to each other”. People. His people. Different shapes. Different theories. One body held together by His “glue”. Not what I have been used to…………..

Who hasn’t looked into the heavens on a clear, starry night and pondered the mystery of it all? The first time my view was extended, however, to include the universe beyond this particular galaxy we inhabit, the utter magnitude of infinity just blew my mind. Somehow it just didn’t seem possible that the God Who created such abysmal stretch of forever could find it even remotely worth His time to know me by name. Yet He did; and the assurance provided unto me of that fact only serves to humble me all the more. In like manner, then, when Annie Dillard takes me with her to Tinker Creek in this latest literary adventure we’re sharing, I’m no less in awe of that which Deity has spoken into existence in terms of minutia. Giant brown water bugs that, having sunk their teeth into their victim’s flesh, are capable of simply liquefying its innards. Why? To allow it to suck the contents of the carcass dry much as if it were merely enjoying a soda. There are also dragonfly larvae whose lower lip is so large it extends itself over the worm’s face. In so doing, a set of spikes are revealed on its underside able to reach out and instantly impale anything nearby that looks tasty. Don’t ask me, though, how it’s able to see to accomplish the task…………..

The list goes on and on. The subjects keep getting smaller and smaller. Microscopic worlds of them, each in its own drop of water; and the horrendous carnage they render unto each other is enough to question whatever prompted the Almighty to so set the stage. Indeed, as the author suggests, “Look, in short, at practically anything-the coot’s feet, the mantis’s face, a banana, the human ear-and see that not only did the Creator create everything, but that He is apt to create anything. He’ll stop at nothing.” Monostyla rotifers shaped like tiny horseshoe crabs. Paramecium with a thousand propulsive hairs jerking in unison as they rush here and there going nowhere in particular. Copepod, rhizopod, and gelatinous moss animalcules. Protozoans, flagellates, and ciliates. Such intricate design demands the hand of a Supreme Being in its blueprint; and yet the horrific manner in which it continues to devour one another in reckless abandon give cause to question its intended purpose in the grand scheme of things. Then, again, who is man that he should so think himself the piece de resistance around which everything else revolves? When one examines the blueprint in its entirety, are we left with merely a Book upon which to rest our faith?...................

Someone once preached me a sermon about the temple of Solomon. Supposedly, each and every stone was pre-cut to such precision that, once set in place, the blocks needed no mortar to seal themselves against one another. It left me wondering about this fleshly one we attempt to put together. In using merely Chapter and Verse secured by our own brand of theology, have we not simply carved for ourselves various ecclesiastical totems before which we bow down to worship? Have we not put our trust in an edifice resting on the strength of our individual perceptions of the Bible rather than the Word alive in us? In so doing, we have anchored our soul in an immovable, cement foundation chiseled out of our own vanity rather than follow the Reality of a resurrection willing to manifest Itself in our affairs. Surely if Christianity stands for anything, it ought to be a risen Savior; but if that tenet is reduced to merely no more than historical authenticity we cling to out of some stubborn faith that we, ourselves, have manufactured, with what do we face those questions that come to us along the way? Me? I need stronger medicine than some dose of “home brew” cooked up out of “how smart I am”. I learned long ago how much I fail in that department…………..

“Tongues”, of course, were never intended as an ego-induced status symbol of our spiritual achievement. The well from which they flow, however, remains vital as an umbilical cord correcting my tendency to err. In that Source, I rest and meet each day in the enigmas it brings…………….