Where Have I Been

I doubt anyone is reading this blog any more. It has been almost two years since I last posted. The dust is thick. Yet I have maintained it rather than throw it all away because I knew that in time I would return. But why now? What is the occasion?

There is no special reason, just as there was no special reason why I stopped posting. At the time it just seemed that I didn't have much worthwhile to say as often as I thought I would...and if you don't say anything long enough there is silence.

In the year and many months since I last posted I've sort of found my permission to write again...write fiction that is. For years I wasn't sure it was a good thing for me to do though I could not exactly pin down why not...something to do with idle entertainments, fruitless fantasies, etc. But in Dallas last spring at our diocesian convention I had the opportunity to talk to a number of priests including Fr. Thomas Hopko about Orthodoxy and creativity, writing in particular and out of those discussions grew a better sense of both the pitfalls and the responsibilities of exercising creative gifts/skills within the Church or as a member of the Church I should say...there is a slight difference. Doubtless I will explore these things a little more in later posts, God willing, but not now.

The past few months have also blessed me, the sinner, the unworthy one, with a new godson, a young man with a wide circle of friends, some of whom have started visiting Church as well. He is the son of a couple I knew many years ago when I was his age, so in that sense it is a double blessing. But it is a blessing with complications. For better or worse since becoming his sponsor and godfather I have found myself at or near the center of a number of young men from the Church. Some are his friends others were alreay at church or are new arrivals that sort of hooked up with the emerging dynamic and so I find myself not just the godfather of one young man but something like a godfather to a number of young men...or if not exactly a godfather then someone who functions within their lives in a number of conventionally godfathery ways. For some it is more than others. And at times it verges upon the paternal...being looked to almost like a surrogate parent (or seems that way sometimes), somone who has both "answers" and a kind of moral authority. They listen to what I say and take it to heart. And that scares me.

It scares me because that puts me in a place of great responsibility of which I am hardly worthy or wise enough to handle. My constant prayer for these young men is "Lord do not let them perish through me a sinner." I know me..I know how easily I could mess them up by doing or saying the wrong thing at the wrong time...even by well intentioned but ill timed good counsel...like pushing books or articles at them before they are in a place to be benefited by them rather than burdened, overwhelmed, or confused by things they just aren't ready to wrestle with. This is an especial concern because they confide things in me...struggles they have...the kind of things one might expect to discuss with a real spiritual father of serious monastic stripe. But that's not me and because they trust what I say, what I think...it is so easy so very easy to speak amiss and injure them, and yet to remain silent can injure them just as much if not more by leaving them to flounder until God forbid they despair on some point or another or just grow weary or bored and move on to the next big thing.

It also scares me a little because I think I love them. But I have to wonder if at least some of what I am loving is actually not them but the attention they show me, the sense that I am needed by them at least for now. This is the ground were it is easiest to mess up, to let my enjoyment of their attention color too much of my interactions with them...because I really do enjoy their company and their questions, even when I don't know the answers. Over the past few weeks my sense of affection for them has grown significantly and I am not sure what to make of it. Older folks like feeling needed and wanted...and I freely admit I do like it very much. And because I think some of them do not just like me, but maybe in some sense love me too or are coming to, not that I really understand why, I know how easily, how inadvertantly I could betray that trust. I'm a firm beliver in the principle if anyone really knew me to the depths they would steer well clear.

The scriptures say to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The fathers say our salvation begins with our neighbor. Salvation in the abstract doesn't make me fear and tremble...I can repent, go to confession, try a little harder at doing the dos and not doing the don'ts, go to church, take communion, etc...but if I mess up in some way I know more or less what to do to fix it and I'm OK...but where my salvation is my neighbor...or closer than my neighbor, my godson and his friends...there..there is occasion for fear and trembling, for if I do not provide a good example, sound counsel, and a covering of prayer and they later fall away because of one of these things...what answer can I give? But there they are asking counsel, examining my example, telling me their lives...and I am the chiefest of sinners who can damage or even ruin their faith with just one careless ill considered word or deed.

All I know to pray is "Lord be merciful, and do not let them perish through me, a sinner." And somehow ther is joy in that, and hope. Sometimes God blesses us with really great neighbors.

Let a Righteous Man Reprove Me

It's been a while since I've posted. I've been thinking, not the whole time of course, some of it I was occupied with other things, some productive, some not, but still I was thinking. Some of my thinking involved what to write here next. I'm cautious about what I post here, perhaps not as much as I should be, but all in all I don't like to just blurt out what's on my mind or turning over in my heart. That is a sure path to disapation or as Shakespeare via Hamlet said, "the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. It is easy to talk all the action out of an idea. Much easier to discourse on holiness than to be holy, much easier to pontificate on theology than to be a true theologian, which as the Father's say is a man of unceasing prayer. And yet for all my precaution...perhap more accurately, for my delay, this sense of precation and the ethos that should be its foundation was recently brought home to me in most unexpected way.

I was rummaging around the Light & Life on-line catalog and came across an entry for a new book by the Coptic monk, Matthew the Poor. Like most book promotions it had a blub...a blurb that rivited my attention the way few things have recently. Let me share the relevent portion of it: "He spent whole nights in prayer, reciting one or two passages from these luminaries [Russian Fathers] and begging these saints to enlighten his understanding".

It was a slap in the face.

Suddenly I caught a glimpe of something I had heard about, read precautions and prescriptives about for a decade, but never really encountered in a way that broached my dull and slow to learn understanding...and I dare say I've yet to really learn the lesson since I'm talking about it before having really letting it sink in and change me.

What am I talking about? Simply this, When was the last time I spent nights in prayer begging to understand some portion of hard won holy wisdom from some Saint or Father. I flip my Bible open as cavilierly as I might a dictionary, how much less the works of Saints and holy ascetics. They are my spiritual pop corn, my spiritual candy aisle, my delightful little pastry cart of spiritual goodies. What a dolt I have been. Today the Ladder, tomorrow a Saint's life, this afternoon a trifle from the counsels of an aged Athonite monk and maybe in a couple of days I'll poke around in the Philokalia....find a nice inspirational passage to think about right before I flip on the news or check my e-mail.

Now I don't expect to go from where I am to where Matthew the Poor is just because my own self serving grazing has been revealed for what it is. That is not in my power. But God helping me I can do better. There is no way I can pick up any of my spiritual books now...let alone order new ones and not remember Matthew's example. What I can do is approch spiritual reading more purposfully, and more mindfully, remembering that what I hold in my hands by the grace of God was hard won, the fruit of a long and holy life spent in deep communion with God. How can I treat that lightly or even just "seriously". I must approach it revently and prayerfully. Maybe I'm not up to weeping all night in prayer to taste the grace that fills one page of some saint's writings. But I can still my heart and pray, asking for help and illumination, asking for humility, and instruction so that I don't just munch through it and think I've accomplished something. And what I learn from handling the writings of Saints and holy ascetics revently I can bring to the Scriptures, so that on every page with every verse that falls under my eyes I may kiss them not just with my lips but with my heart. And God willing I will not just to rush from chapter to chapter and book to book but to prayerfully ponder its passages with a heart humbled and searching before God.

O I'm so far from that...so far from even the making of a good beginning...but it can't be same again...never again because I know I there is an old man who lives in the desert in a land where he is persecuted for following Christ and he weeps and prays to understand a single passage from the Fathers, and I poor soul do not know yet how to weep at all.

Come Closer

I've always found confession stressful. Mainly it is because I don't know what to say. Have I sinned yes, lied, yes, been angry, yes, had bad thoughts, yes, been lazy, yes, forgetful of prayer, yes, don't fast properly, yes in spades, put off doing the good that I could to endulge myself in some way, yes, been intemperate, self indulgent, and comfort loving, oh goodness yes, yes, and yes. Basically this list of sin types that I haven't done explicitly wouldn't fill a thimble and those that I have would overflow a fifty gallon drum. And since I have not confessed as often as is prudent, roughly about every six to eight weeks, I forget most of what I've done or haven't done except some of the more noticable habitual stuff. Yet I know I've done a lot more than I remember. On top of that what I do remember seems petty, triffling, in ways...you know no big stuff like murder, burglury, or vandalism of public property. In that department I'm pretty much untarnished so far as I know.

But that's really the problem, I think. I read in the Fathers about how they feel responsible for the sins of their neighbor as if they were their own in addition to being horrified and broken before God at their own many short-comings. They genuinely mourn their sins and failings and not only theirs but their neighbor's as if they were theirs. The best I can do is an intellectual acknowlegment that I'm a bad sinner, and a bad sinner with a poor memory for my own sins at that. And while I suppose it is some measure of grace to be able to understand mentally that I am a sinner, that I need a heart of repentance rooted in me far more deeply than it is now, it would be so much better to know really how far short of God's glory I am.

Compared to the saints who wept rivers for their sins, I am a doormat at slaughter house, but I'm blind to it in my heart. And because I cannot really see myself as I am I cannot repent with the depth of heart that I need to see Christ and know Him as He has called for His servants and disciples to be. This I know keeps me from participating in the Divine Liturgy with all my heart, from unbroken prayer and worship. How often do I catch myself counting heads or thinking about how to answer this or that e-mail or forum post, or where would be a good place to eat later, or what do I need to get from the store tomorrow, etc. etc. And then I realize it and bring my mind back to the service...for a little while. But if I saw my sins and mourned for them as I ought, and took my joy only in the comfort of God's Spirit and not of TV land and a soft pillow. Then every word of the Divine Liturgy would burn in my heart and when it came time to approach the Holy Mysteries it would be with fear and trembling along with joy.

And the Lord knows this. He patiently waits for me to begin to do the things I've negelected, to little by little wrestle with those sins like prayerlessness that so easily beset me. He knows I want that repentant heart, that contrite spirit, that eye single upon Christ. Of course I know He knows because He is God and knows everything, but He knows my need personally, and has extended His invitation personally...at least I think He has.

The Fathers warn us about trusting in supposed spiritual experiences when we are novices to the faith or have not yet been purified and taught about the deeper things of Spiritual life as we should. They are decietful, and even if genuine, best kept to oneself lest they be a sumbling block or a source of pride. So perhaps I err to speak further and add to my sin. I don't know for sure, but this seems tame enough, safe enough to share.

The Sunday before Nativity I had something I count as a spiritual experience, though in the scheme of things it may not have been. I had been thinking about all the sorts of things I've just discussed, my genuine lack of worthiness to partake, my careless ways with my spiritual life, wondering what I need to do where to begin to start fixing some of it rather than just regreting it and keeping on without making a substantial change. Now I'm a great believer in the still small voice. I belive that if we pay attention to the world around us we can hear God whispering from time to time. For example once while out walking many years ago a dog ran out of a yard and bit me on the back of the leg. It was unusual, dogs might bark at me, but they seldom bite, and given half a chance we can become friends rather quickly with the aide of a biscuit or two. But this dog bit me, not bad, but enough to notice, and I should have, but I didn't and a little further down the road I encountered a serious temptation that at other times I would have resisted, but this time I didn't. And no sooner than I realized what I had done, I remembered the dog. And it felt a great deal as Balaam might have felt about having ignored his donkey. God was trying to warn me to be sharp, I was being prowled for that night. Well, at the chalice something similar happened...no the priest didn't bite me. Rather, he said, "Come closer."

Now in the natural I was just standing a little to far away for him to safely feed me the Holy Eucharist from the spoon, but those words held a weight for me that went beyond the priest's conscious intent. It spoke to so much that needs addressing in my life...come closer. Do I not pray enough, then come closer. Do I not fast enough, then come closer, do I not keep watch on my thoughts or how I spend my time, then come closer. Where a rebuke was in order, I found instead an invitation. Come closer.

Of course invitations from the Lord are serious things. In Jesus' parables He told of a king who invited his friends to his feast, but one by one they declined to come...I've bought a cow, I've married a wife, that field's not going to harvest itself, maybe next time. Well we know how that parable ends. And this gets close to the root of some of my personal sorrow in all this...I feel sorry for Jesus having to put up with a servant like me. I want to do better more because I don't want His pains and effort over me to be thankless and wasted. Maybe that is some kind of foolish sentiment. I want to succeed in the Christian life, even if just a little not for myself so much as so He will be vindicated in His love for me. I don't want to decline the invitation, nor show up without proper attire. God helping me I want to draw closer to love and honor Him in all of my life.

Now I don't expect anytime soon to be praying for three years day and night on a rock in the forest. like St. Seraphim of Sarov or wandering the deserts for years as did St. Mary of Egypt. That life is still way too high for me. But God helping me, I hope to do better, to be consistant in my times of prayer, to make daily room for the Holy Scriptures in my life as a place of communion, to be moderate in meeting my needs and frugile in my pleasures. The key perhaps is purposfulness, to act on the knowledge that spiritual life is not automatic. It must be husbanded with purpose and tended with vigilence. And when the old habits are relearned and better ones learned new then it is time to redouble one's vigilence, lest it all be spoiled again on some day unawares. This is what I think today as I muse and write. Will tomorrow see godly labor consistant with this desire? Will I get up one more time than I fall down. God helping me.


Anyway, may it please God to not have to chase me down with a bassett or a donkey this time. As Proverbs says and my father used to quote all the time, "a word to the wise is sufficient." Me...wise? Hardly, but by the grace of God, not deaf or altogether dim either. Lord have mercy on this chiefest of sinners.

Who Is My Enemy?

Ask me who my neighbor is and I can rattle off the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Holy Scriptures teach to do the good to others that one wants for oneself. They teach that what we do for or against the "least of these, My brethern" we do unto Christ. Asked how I should respond to my enemies and any number of Scriptures can be cited as to the Christian attitude towards those who dispitefully use us or speak evil of us. We are instructed to turn the other cheek, resist not evil, do good to those who abuse us, to overcome evil with good, to be innocent and as guileless as babes, lambs, and doves. The question I have though is who is my enemy?

If no one is persecuting me, if no one that I know of speaks evilly of me, if no one seeks to use their power or influence to injure or thwart me in some way, if everyone is more or less nice to me....who is my enemy that I may turn my cheek to, do good in the place of evil for, and pray for when dispitefully used? What if the worse that another does to me is at best mildly annoying or inconvenient?

Is not having enemies of the right sort a spiritual danger sign. By the right sort I mean those who are one's enemies for no good reason...not the ones who we may have given ample causus belli (or other high fallutin' Latin words to that effect). Does not having enemies mean I'm doing something wrong, or to put it conversely, am I not doing enough right? Woe to you when all men speak well of you. Well...I doubt "all" men speak well of me, and of those that don't they are not altogether without cause. But that said, so far as I know...most people I know do speak well of me. That can't be a good thing can it?

What I mean is, if I prayed more, and prayed more earnestly, if I sacrificed more for the sake of the poor or the needy, if I fasted more fully and rigorously with unfeigned prayerful humility, If I gave myself to extensive reading of the Scritures and the lifes of saints at every other spare moment not spent buying groceries for the elderly, drying orphan's tears, and swapping out weekends at missionary outposts in India and the Amazon, and still do my job with generous and joyful abandon... if I did all these things it would be expected that our enemy would try to set up any number of snares and temptations as well as enemies who hated me just for being a Christian and had no compunction about hurting me in some way. But I don't begin to make a dent in any of those or a dozen other good things...and I remain without any enemies that I know of.

Who shall inspire my gentle martyred sighs if I don't have an enemy? Is this respite the Lord's mercy or the fruit of my own spiritual laziness? So how do I know who our what my enemy is when none declares himself.

But then perhaps the answer to who is my neighbor resolves who is my enemy as well. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tse said, "I am good to all men, therefore all men get to be good". If, in the depths of my heart I see all men as my neighbor then even my enemy, declared or not is my neighbor. My calling is to treat all men as Christ, to love and care for them as I would Christ, to suffer and forbear them as Christ does me. If I enter that state of mind and heart deeply enough, might I not be rendered incapable of telling friend from foe since to my heart , they are all friends, the love of Christ in me for them swallowing up every other consideration? I don't know.

I'm not sure I want to know, but I think perhaps I need to.

Who is my enemy? Sometimes I think he might be the one staring back at me in the mirror.

Suffer the Children

One of the things I find myself doing during the Divine Liturgy is watching the children. Maybe I shouldn't but I do. There is something profound when I see a little one enter the temple and his mother or father gently takes a little hand and teaches it to make the sign of the cross. Then the little ones rush to the candle box grab a candle or two and look up with expectant faces while mommy or daddy drops in a few quarters and gets some candles of their own and together, parents and children approach the icons. The children are so eager to be lifted up to kiss the icons and to set their candles among all the others.

There is a little girl in our parish, maybe three or four, who is not quite tall enough to get her candle in the stand without help, but she tries ever so hard. Recently she discovered that she can set her own candle in two of the stands if she gets behind them on the steps before the iconostasis. She has a little brother, just turned two, just learning to talk, just getting steady on his own feet. During the liturgy he likes poking mommy in the eye and saying "eye" or in the nose and saying "nose". But after a while he tires of that game and scrambles down and toddles over to the nearest icon and trys to pull himself up to kiss it. Daddy lends a hand before something topples over. Then he goes back to sit next to brother and sister at his parents feet...for a little while. Big brother is interesting to watch too, hes five or so. He's old enough to remember most of what he is supposed to do. Most of the time...sometimes with a verbal nudge he remembers to cross himself when entering the temple, and I've seen him cross himself sometimes when he moves from one side of the temple to the other. And when kissing the icons he remembers to make his metanoias first, just like mommy and daddy. Recently I've observed him looking up at his parents during the "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal" and doing the metanoia's with them.

The other thing like to watch is the relationships that form between the children and the adults in the Divine Liturgy. Little boys and little girls are perpetually standing with or being held by other adults or older children. It is definately a relief for the mommies and daddies whose arms are tired, but it is a joy for the adults who have a little one at their side or asleep on their shoulder. And it is a joy for the children too I think, to know that they are accepted and safe in a larger circle than that of their immediate family. They receive love from everyone around them. The temple for them is a place of love and acceptance, of joyous renewal of friendships, and of comfort, a place where they belong. Even the kid's whose parents are a little too strict and fussy with them find relief in the embrace some sweet lady who takes pity on them and lets them stand with her while she gently directs their attention to what is happening next in the Divine Liturgy. In these days where children are routinely taught to fear and flee strangers for their own safety, it is good to see a place where no one is a stranger for long and adults are loved and trusted even if they aren't mommy and daddy or grandma and grandpa. Maybe in a much larger parish things would be different, but for now they are not and it refreshes the heart to see that they are not.

Then there the moments that are just precious in their own right, the little boy who pretends to direct the choir when he thinks no one is looking, the toddler who is fascinated by the sunbeam on the floor that he can't quite figure out how to step on, the little girl sitting on the floor very carefully folding a red bandana.

And then there are the older children who begin to take reponsibilites as adults. The older boys of course routinely assist at the altar and when they do not they are often the favorite companions of the little boys who like to stand with them from time to time. The older girls too are favorite surrogates for little children both girls and boys. They also help with collecting the offering. And both older boys and girls stay behind a little after Divine Liturgy to clean up, to pluck out the candle stubs, trim wicks on the lamps, sweep the floor, etc. whatever needs doing. There are a couple of adults who help as well and direct things but the kids over the past year have taken on more and more of the responsibility for the cleanliness of the temple on their own.

A memory I think that sums it all up was something I saw at a party at a fellow parishoneer's house last Christmas. Several families were over with their children. And I remember one little girl who was standing on a sofa leaning across the back so that she could get to all the pretty things on the desk behind it. Her mother tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention to have her turn around and sit down, to which the little girl replied, "I'm busy". She had found a cross on the desk and was kissing it.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov

Saint Seraphim of Sarov
Originally uploaded by unworthy seraphim.

Silly Questions, Serious Answers

I don't know about other Orthodox Christians, but I suspect a number of them have some silly sounding, but to them serious questions they would like a well thought out answer on from someone like a priest or pious scholar of Orthodox theology who might know. They are the kind of questions that if brought up in almost any context from casual conversation to a catechism class could set crickets chirping faster than one could say horologion. But at their root....when one gets past the question itself...the things one has to think about and to weigh to give a meaningful answer...that is very serious.

The biggest problem with my questions is that even if given a serious answer they would pretty much remain in the realm of abstraction and conjecture, realms with which Orthodox theology is not terribly comfortable. To illustrate I was reading book length interview with Fr. Roman Braga on the course of his life. During it, speaking on the subject of the Jesus Prayer, he related the thoughts of some monks, deep practitioners of the prayer, commenting on another more urban monastery or seminary. They said that there, "they lecture about the Jesus Prayer." The implication is clear...lecture teaches one little or nothing worthwhile in regard to the Jesus Prayer. To learn about prayer or any sort one must simply pray and that without ceasing. Prayer teaches prayer. And the point is well taken. Theology properly needs to be incarnated not just batted about like balls at a tennis match. And yet my questions, my mental itches remain.

They remain because they are not an end in themselves; the answers matter to me at a creative level. As I've mentioned before, I like to write. I have big unfulfilled novel ideas, but going further with some of those ideas, developing the story I've been pondering for decades depends upon some useful answers from Orthodox anthropology. But informing fictional endeavors is probably not high up on the best use scale of theological discourse. It is, I admit dicey territory. There is a vast gulf between the use put to theology in the works of Dostevsky and that of Katzanakis. One writer is lauded as nearly a saint and the other was excommunicated for his gross impiety. And it seems to me, unless one is careful, even with an honest creative effort one can too easily find oneself more in the company of Katzanakis than Dostevsky.

But now there is this web log thing, this blog. Who knows, perhaps if I post my questions some kind passing priest or theologian in days to come will offer me something useful to consider. So here goes.

The Big Question: The larger question I want to deal with is the safest: What is man? It is to this overarching question that all the silly questions relate.

The Silly Questions: There are a couple of things I've run across in St. Gregory of Nyssa that intrigue me from a creative writerly standpoint. I recall reading somewhere he said that man was/may have been created en masse like all the other animals on the sixth day, but one became Adam when God breathed upon him. Other saints I've read on this point relate how man was not created a dead lump, but was created alive prior to God breathing on him making him what he was before the fall. Also, if I am not mistaken St. Gregory and others seem to hold a view that fallen man in many respects reverts in varying degrees to living in his "beastial" animal nature or something like that. St. Gregory and others also seem to be saying that man's rational character is part of the impress of the image of God in him.

In another place St. Gregory says that the Holy Eucharist is not for irrational animals. And this brings me to the threshold of my questions. Here it is:

Can there be another rational animal besides man? Could another creature like a capauchin monkey, chimpanzee, African gray parrot, or an octopus even be genetically "tinkered" with by man to have more complex brains and thus at least at the raw equipment level have the capacity for "rationality". Would having that capacity actually "produce: a rational creature? Could just having bigger more complex brains give something more than just very clever animal? This would seem to be the implication of a materialist perspective, that human sentience arises out of his particual biology with its highly developed central nervous system. If that development can be duplicated or parallelled in another species then that should produce other sentient beings who are not human.

But if like St. Gregory suggests mere materiality is not enough, that the distinguishing feature of the human persona as it were arises not first from his biology but from an earlier direct encounter between our earliest progenitor and God, where God impressed man with something of Himself so to speak, then what would such genetically enhanced creatures be? By "aping" aspects of his own physiology in that of another species could man for better or for worse succeed in sharing the gift of what he is to some degree with another species? And if he did as a fallen man then would this new species of sentient rational creature be likewise fallen as man is fallen?

Or if our efforts only yielded very clever beasts something like Adam before God breathed on Him, whatever that may have been, could God be prevailed upon to breathe also upon these creatures made more or less in the image of man? What would that mean regarding such creatures and their relationship with God and His Church?

Which brings us to the next round of silly questions? If by tinkering man can share his own "rational being" or if by Divine fiat God raises up other creatures man has tried to make like himself, then what does this mean for the Church. What would be the cosmological place for such creatures. Would they stand more or less with the angels? What could be permitted them within the Church? Could they attain to holy orders? Could they even be allowed to partake in the Holy Eucharist which would make them also members of the Body of Christ in the same way mankind can be? If that cannot be why not? What kind of sacramental life would be open to them?

If we cannot directly raise creatures to rational status by tinkering with what genetic capacities they alrealdy have...what if we in some small measure hybridize them...unite some key sections of our DNA with theirs. Does our leven leven them to rational status because they sare directly if minutely in humanity's biological nature?

The thing is this, if God made us capable of being like Him and participating in His Divine energies and be thereby transformed into His likeness why can we not do the same for other creature in the world to which we have an ontological connection? Cannot not enable them to become something like us, and becoming like us then able like us to bear the both the image and likeness of God?

Think of Chimpanzees...genetical they are less than two percentage points of difference away from us...how much of a DNA bump would it take to push them across the line in our direction. What would they be then?

Or what of Neanderthals..a seperate human species, stronger bodies, bigger brains, bigger noses. What if using Jurassic Park science one flesh specimin was found, its DNA extracted used to ferilze an embyro that was implanted and brought to term. What would that "human" be? True rational, potential Body of Christ, human, or very clever 'pre-Adamic" beast?

We are taught that at the end of the age everything will be transparent to the glory of God. What I wonder is would that include some opening of the communion now avaiable to man to other creatures as well...which would it seem have to include raising them to rational beings somehow.

Which raises another question. Let us say that this the plan and it will unfold in something of the same stream that brought forth man. God made man, man fell, God redeemed man and united Himself to our humanity, time goes by until the judgement, divinized man imparts something of his gift to one or more groups of animals so that they become rational beings and are in some capacity brought into the life of the Church where they may grow to experience divinization and well...and so on.

Let's just say that is the plan, or something like it. That would mean that it might be possible for man to jump the gun prior to the Judgement...making the creatures lifted into sentience be modeled on our fallen humanity, not our divinized humanity. They would begin existance as a kind of abomination...a frankensteinish race that still might be redeemable and ultimately brought back to the place they were meant to occupy if not a better place.

These are the kinds of things that bump around inside my skull, because, in addition to the story potential available in what ever answers may come, the core question may be more fully addressed...what is man, not just in the context of other men or God, but in relation to the rest of creation, and what are the implications of that?

Reflections on my Gourd

I have a gourd, an unfinished work of presumptive art perched above my computer. It's a bushel gourd about 13 inches in diameter and carved into its deep woody surface are images of ancient moss bearded oaks and long lazy bayous. It took hours...hours and hours over a couple of days to get it done, the designs lifed from internet images of Newcomb pottery. It should be beautiful...gorgeous even, but its not.

My gourd's problem is I tried to approximate the colors of the Newcomb pottery with shoe polish, black, blue, and neutral. It should have worked. The books said shoe polish would give gourds a nice leathery sheen. They even had pictures to prove it. So I beleived them. First I laid on the blue, but I just couldn't get it quite dark enough where I wanted it....and the natural tan of the gourd showing through the blue tended to neutralize..dull its imact which I tried to regain by selective applications of neutral to areas I wanted warmer...but it just desolved and diluted the blue...and so I replied with black and my detail got lost unless you stand ten inches away...and even then it's not "black" just dirty looking tan with some really dark splotchy areas.

I want to fix it, to get rid of the wax and start over with paints...something I have more experience with. But to do that I've got to come up with a way to get the wax off...soak it in ammonia, heat gun and paper towels...I think I could do it, but it will take work...hours and hours perhaps. And so it sits there above my computer waiting for me to get around to it. It has been waiting for months and will probably wait a couple more before that day dawns, barring a miracle or a burst of inspiration.

The sad thing is the gourd is the perfect metaphor for so much of my life...so much begun well, so much anticipated and hoped for, worked earnestly at...and then comes the hitch...the problem, the snag that raises the ante not higher than I am willing to pay as an abstract proposition, just higher than I'm willing to pay right then, or tomorrow, or the next day...but maybe, maybe next week will do, until next week is this week and the best time was yesterday but not today, something has come up. A TV show, work, a game, a book, a guest, a sink full of dishes, that newspaper I just remembered I forgot to buy.

I've done the gourd thing before, many times. A couple of years ago when I lived in Saipan I had the largest unplanted garden that anyone has never seen. So many beautiful flowers, so many great vegetables, such an array of herbs and curiosities to delight any chef or child or child chef, all in little packets neatly stored in box full of all my seeds and dreams. On on the back porch I had lots of pots, potting soil and all the tools I would need. What did me in? Grass ninjas, children, typhoons, and postage stamp yards. My gourds and muscadines were routinely savaged by yard workers with their weed eaters and small children who thought it great sport to pick my one green gourd in its infancy. Typhoon winds shredded my other attempts...oh yes and the snails devoured my mint. Set back, frustrated...I stopped trying until I got back to Mississippi. Over the past two years I must have planted three to five hundred gourds only to see them all die from drought, a neighbor's friendly bush-hogging of my hidden patches deep in the wood, or a neighbor's friending disking a field bare inches from the fenceline I chose as trellis.., oh, and there was this hurricane that did in the five or six plants that survived all that.

And then there is this mileau novel...this series of novels that I have been not quite writing for over 20 years. I've dozens of note books filled with my jottings and sketches. I even had a couple of reasonably good "seed" short stories favorably reviewed by my peers and almost published...not quite impersonally rejected. I've even taught creative writing at the college level...but the ideas bumping around in my skull, some of which I think are very good ideas, never quite make their way to paper in any finished form. But it will...one day....when I don't feel tired or stressed by work or family, when my furniture and books are all arranged and ordered just the way I want, when I've updated my software, when that last unifiying keystone idea hits, one day, some day before pigs fly.

What bothers my conscience though is not an unplanted gardern or an unfinished gourd, or even an unwritten novel, rather it is an unlived life...a life unlived or at least not lived enough where it counts, where it matters forever. When I see my gourd, I see my prayer life, my study of Scripture, my undealt with faults and failures. My sins. What have I lost to those hours spent doing anything that would distract me for a while...not because I do not want to pray, I do, or read the scriptures, I do, or engage in some liturgical art like iconography (I've hundreds of dollors of books and art supplies and one troublesome unfininshed gessoed board), I do, but always it seems I don't want to do it just now, rather I will do it latter...and latter...and latter...until I reach a place where it takes an almost herculean effort to make myself do what I ought when I ought, if just for a little while.

So here I sit, typing for a blog on the internet and there sits my unfinished almost beautiful gourd.