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.