Skip to main content

What kind of miracle are you?

In reading a brief passage today from The Backyard Beekeeper I had one of those epiphanic moments we all occasionally have. A bee spends the first three days of its life as an egg, about the size of a grain of rice sliced in half, and after that "the egg dissolves, releasing a tiny grublike larva." From there depending on whether it was fertilized or not it becomes a queen (if the workers decide that), a worker, or a drone. Yeah, yeah, to beekeepers this is nothing special. This is what most novice beekeepers learn early on. My question is where does that bee essence come from? Sure, there's the sperm and ovum, that's true for nearly all living things, but think about it--all living things are composites of their forebears. The individual bees, bears, and humans didn't exist before conception--and yet, here they and we are! What a miracle is this! Skip the genetics lecture, I get it; where did we (that's you and me) come from? How is there bee essence and oak essence and perch essence and you essence to bring these about? In other words, genetics doesn't explain the first of anything because where did "that" come from? From what repository are we drawn? God, in his infinite love, has crafted a world, nay, a universe, before which was a void. And now, here I am, typing with fingers that, while far from perfect, function reasonably well. How am I here now?

Wow, if there is no god someone's got some serious 'splainin' to do.

(Non-sequiter alert): Only twenty minutes ago I finished watching Wes Craven's Red Eye. A worthwhile rental. The violence wasn't vengeance, merely self-defense. I'm so tired of the unnecessary bullet(s) to the bad guy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Worth Quoting

There are but three social arrangements which can replace Capitalism: Slavery, Socialism, and Property.                                                                                                 --Hilaire Belloc                                                   ...

Independent Women?

      During breakfast today I was reading an excerpt from a play in The New York Times Magazine (I know, I was a day behind and read Saturday's edition yesterday) entitled Rust .  The play, written by a professor at Grand Valley State University, here in Michigan, is a nonfiction drama about the closing of a GM plant in Wyoming, MI.  The play itself sounds interesting and I enjoyed the excerpt, but what caught my eye was something a character said.  The character is "Academic" and plays a historian and guide to the playwright, also a character.  He is explaining the rise of the automobile factories and the effect of the car on American culture.  He says, "Women became independent, they go from producers of food and clothing to consumers of food and clothing."  This was meant as an earnest, praiseworthy point.     I would counter with "How far we've fallen."  To say that a woman (or a man) is independent because she has m...

Mystery Meat indeed!

During my grocery shopping today I was asked to pick up some hot dogs for some meal or other. Now I am not an aficianado of the 'ot dog, but will usually have a corn dog or BBQed version of one or two during the summer. If my children like them, so be it. The trouble came when trying to find a package that didn't arrive from a chemistry lab. Nitrates and nitrites, sugars (including HFCS), the preservative sodium benzoate, and other fun substances littered every package I picked up. Even Hebrew National which "Answers to a Higher Standard" was doped. Apparently Kosher doesn't mean it can't be injected with a chemical cocktail. So-called "Natural Casings" were prominently displayed to catch my eye. As if sheep or pig intestine somehow offsets Agricorps tinkering. I ended up buying the brand "sold at Tiger Stadium" not because it was chemical-free, Hell no! It was merely the brand with the least additives. Why does a hot dog need su...