The Teeter-Totter Would Cease to Choose Sides...

I loved those pretend “comments” on God’s handiwork one post back. I liked the pretend guy who pretend wrote that the creeping things that creepeth over the earth were gross. Yup, probably. Now try realizing that there are millions of them swarming all over your body right now, 90% of which didn’t even start out on your body. (See the work of Wash U School of Medicine scientist Jeffrey Gordon who says there are 10 times more microbial cells on and in our bodies than there are human cells (but maybe don't look into all that on a night when you’re having trouble getting to sleep.) I really liked the pretend person who asked “Why are the creatures more or less symmetrical on a vertical axis but completely asymmetrical on a horizontal axis? “I liked thinking how funny it would be if we were symmetrical on a horizontal axis too yuk yuk. Because just think we’d look with feet coming out of the tops of our bodies!  Or, we might have two heads, one above and one below and no feet. Then how would we get places, hmmmm? Maybe the heads would be fashioned out of bouncy stuff so we could get along by hopping.Real commenter Frank wrote in my 'real' comments section to say he got thinking about our being vertically symmetrical and went to the mirror to part his hair down the middle and nearly scared himself to death he looked so much like Charlie Sheen.He's right: Being left to right symmetrical isn't all it's cracked up to be and most of us aren't even close anyway with one hand being larger than the other, one eye squintier etc.  I know one of my eyes looks like it belongs to one of the younger Mouseketeer – Karen or Cubby - remember them anyone out there in TV land?while the other eye looks like all three Kennedy brothers circa 1960.So God wasn't going for symmetry at all, it seems.But the idea of balance has me remembering a poem I have always loved. It's about a teeter-totter and I offer it here. Call it the sermon for this November Sunday and while you’re feeling grateful for Paul Simms's wit with the Creation blog  comments, send up a nice word of praise for  April Bernard who wrote this poem called   “ What Would Happen Then” :                       

A bird, bright and quick,

blue with livid streaks,

would arrive on the windowsill

as official harbinger

and then….

The low would be raised up

the sneers crushed under their own bricks,

the teeter-totter would cease to choose sides

and sit in peaceful sway on its fulcrum.

The kiss that had been held back

all those years at last would release

into the mouth in flood,

And ‘why not?’ would replace all other dicta,

but gently, as a sunlit nudge.

God's Blog

If God posted on the internet: Paul Simms spun up this creative little piece of writing for The New Yorker a few months ago. It has God announcing His Creation and then a bunch of us moronic humans “commenting” in His work. It’s funny for how sweetly positive God sounds - and how pettily full of ourselves we humans are!It starts with God talking:"UPDATE: Pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with in just six days. Going to take tomorrow off. Feel free to check out what I’ve done so far. Suggestions and criticism (constructive, please!) more than welcome. God out.(I love “God out! So jaunty. :-) ) And here are some of the so-called comments. The whole piece is available here if you like:   Enjoy this Saturday, Sabbath to many, and a kind of Sabbath to us all~!

•  Not sure who this is for. Seems like a fix for a problem that didn’t exist. Liked it better when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.
• Going carbon-based for the life-forms seems a tad obvious, no?
• The creeping things that creepeth over the earth are gross.
• Not enough action. Needs more conflict. Maybe put in a whole bunch more people, limit the resources, and see if we can get some fights going. Give them different skin colors so they can tell each other apart. 
• Why are the creatures more or less symmetrical on a vertical axis but completely asymmetrical on a horizontal axis? It’s almost like You had a great idea but You didn’t have the balls to go all the way with it.
• Amoebas are too small to see. They should be at least the size of a plum.
• Beta version was better. I thought the Adam-Steve dynamic was much more compelling than the Adam-Eve work-around You finally settled on.
• SPOILER! One of them is going to eat something off that tree You told them not to touch.
• Adam was obviously created somewhere else and then just put here. So, until I see some paperwork proving otherwise, I question the legitimacy of his dominion over any of this.
• Unfocussed. Seems like a mishmash at best. You’ve got creatures that can speak but aren’t smart (parrots). Then, You’ve got creatures that are smart but can’t speak (dolphins, dogs, houseflies). Then, You’ve got man, who is smart and can speak but who can’t fly, breathe underwater, or unhinge his jaws to swallow large prey in one gulp. If it’s supposed to be chaos, then mission accomplished. But it seems more like laziness and bad planning.
• Putting boobs on the woman is sexist.
• Wow. Just wow. I don’t even know where to start. So the man and his buddy the rib-thing have dominion over everything. They’re going to get pretty unbearable really fast. What You need to do is make them think that there were other, bigger, scarier creatures around a long time before them. I suggest dinosaurs. No need to actually create dinosaurs—just create some weird-ass dinosaur bones and skeletons and bury them in random locations. Man will dig them up eventually and think, What the f?
• Epic fail.
•  Meh.