The Essence of Life

[Oil painting by Leah Saulnie]

So...I was thinking...we're a pretty conceited bunch, us humans. We're always believing that what we believe is truth and everyone else just doesn't get it. Especially when it comes to ourselves. We think that if we're smart enough, or wise enough, or experienced enough, we can figure out what we're all about. Each one of us has a belief about where "it" all came from. The world. Creation. Us. If someone was asked where it all came from, they'd either have some semblance of an answer, or they'd stop and think about it and try to come up with an answer (you just did, didn't you?). As if we could actually tap into an answer for such a question.

Admit it. It would be an extremely rare person that would answer that they know absolutely nothing about how life began because a created thing cannot comprehend its own creation or creator.
(however, some of you might be self-aware enough to have acknowledged your own ignorance while reading that last sentence - but if you acknowledged your ignorance after it was pointed out that you might be self-aware enough to do so, you probably haven't accepted your ignorance, but just have a desire to be self-aware, and you are now, instead, starting to think that I have no idea what I'm talking about and I'm being conceited by acting as if I know you, which, obviously, I am. But then, so are you, and I've just given you another example of how we're all pretty conceited)

Anyway, I was thinking how conceited we are because I had this conversation with a friend the other day about God creating the world, and Adam and Eve, and how long did that really take, and was it really seven real days, or was it over millions of years, or did God make millions of years of stuff happen in just seven days? The day after our conversation, I realized it makes no difference at all how long it took.

Life was created.

That sort of puts a grinding halt to any thought processes about how or when or why or who. How can we possibly comprehend the least little thing about creation when we are intrinsically incapable of grasping the concept of life coming into existence from nothing. How can we, the created, understand anything about our own creation?

Yet, we spend an incredible amount of human energy believing, discussing, studying, and explaining the who, what, when, where, why and how of our existence, as if we know what the essence of life even is. None of us has a clue. It's the elephant in the room and we're all talking about its trunk and wrinkly skin and little fuzzy hairs and droopy eyes and floppy ears and whether its breath is sweet or salty, but no one admits there is an elephant there. We all know that we can't possibly comprehend the creation of our own life, but we all live as if the base-line for human intelligence is the assumption that, if we just try hard enough, we can figure out what life is all about.

Admit it. The only way we can know anything about creation is by divine revelation.
I ache for it. Divine revelation.

Am I a Man?

The following is a guest post by my daughter. It is a two-voice poem and is in response to the novel "All is Quiet on the Western Front." The voice alternates between the main character, Paul, at the start of the war and at the end of the war.

Am I a Man? 

by Dana Q

Photo: Album cover "The Young Veteran" Ted Bee

I am a man

I was a man

Who has a loving family

Whose family no longer knows him

I am a young man

I am a man aged by loss

Who loves to escape into fiction

Who can't escape from his reality

I am strong and capable

I am weak and wounded

I am a man who will fight for his country 

I am a man who was beaten by war

My friends and I will fight together

I am the last to die of my longtime friends

We will always protect each other

I tried to save them but I couldn't

Together, we'll be heroes

Alone, I am forgotten

My life has just begun

I don't know why I'm still alive

This Side of the Pit

photo from merseawildlife.blogspot.com

My hand emerged

From the rain soaked ash,

From the muck.

This time, it didn't plead or yearn

And sink back in despair.

This time it stretched, breathed,

And landed firmly on a craggy rock.

It smiled. My hand smiled.

It knew what had just happened.

It didn't know ahead of time

it was going to grasp the rock.

But it knew now,

the way only hands can know,

The inevitable unfolding of events

That was sure to follow.

The force that caused

My hand to fiercely grip

Next made my arm to flex and coil.

This arm that hung dormant for many lives

With no resistance,

Now surged with ambition.

My body follows

Rising up.

Emerging from the deep.

My leg lifts a foot.

My foot finds placement on the rock.

The solid rock.

How free. How firm. How present

Is the rock.

I stand.

I stand!

I stand on solid rock.

I stand solid on the rock!

I walk and

Almost don't look back.

But I want to remember

What it looks like from this side of the pit.

In Which Heroes Are All Dead

And the heavens opened
And half of all the people were swallowed.
The other half.

And half of the remaining ran
Forever. They didn't stop.
They're still running.

And half of those that stood
paralyzed, eventually decayed.

Others sat down and cried
until their tears were salt ran dry.

Some started counting rocks.
They don't know why.
They sort and stack and rearrange.

I was standing, watching, when I finally woke.
I saw it all and did nothing.
I'm still standing. But awake.

A few, I see, dance.
I want to dance, but I stand.
Their dance is not of joy, but to chase away the fear.

Silent movies play in my head
In which heroes are all dead.
But I'm awake. And here.

Clothed or Naked?

I dreamed.
"We are more comfortable clothed in a lie than being naked."

Glory or Death

[Glenwood Cemetery, Houson, TX, bookloversinc.com]

Secret lives, secret hearts, I see
Unfolded and enlightened.
Angel eyes of wisdom and purity have
Brought me grace and weariness together.
Even angst against a holiness.
Dawdling in the temporal seems to
Strip time from a greater good,
From destiny,
From almighty eternity itself,
As if that were possible.
Indeed the lens has flipped, revealing
A mission of mining eternity
From this very mundane.
Oh, for that to be my destiny!
Is anything mundane,
Really?
From One perspective,
It's all either Glory or Death.