I had been up since seven that morning, which, since I should've been out of bed by 6:30, meant that I had been running late all day. Running behind stresses me out, and as any girl can testify a hormone-stress cocktail is volatile if allowed to mix, and I could feel the spoon stirring inside of me. Even though I was running late to dinner with a friend on campus, as an act of prudence I changed course and sat next to Mirror Lake for 5 minutes to calm down.
I sat in the grass and watched the fountain, waiting for the emotions to settle. Then along comes a happy couple of ducks waddling along the edge of the lake toward me pecking at the grass for food. Their boat-shaped hips swayed awkwardly from side to side as their flourescent- orange pancake-thin feet slapped the stones; I noticed the disproportionally pompous curled feathers at the tail of the male and began to laugh out-loud. Never before have I ever been so assured of two of God's attributes - His pleasure in the act of creation, and His sense of humor - as when as I was watching those two silly creatures. Could you come to any other conclusion? How utterly and delightfully impractical ducks are. God must have laughed when he made the first one, and that is a comfort to me.
I went to a different lake 2 weeks ago at Whetstone and a friend and I marveled at the too-obvious extravagance of our surroundings. Maple, oak and pine trees lined the water - why are their leaves different shapes? Or their bark different textures? An obese pond fish highlighter-orange wiggled over to us into the shallows - why practically bother with color at all? Dogs can't even see in color. A turtle's red-striped snout broke the surface, followed by his textured shell - why have a geometric pattern engraved like art along his back? Why bother loading food with taste and texture and variety, why go to the trouble of filling honeysuckle pips with sweet scent? Another pair of ducks were here, paddling with their bright orange feet, and the sheer enjoyment and extravagance of creation filled me. How could anyone look at a Desert Box Turtle's yellow paint stripes and say there was no painter? How could anyone look at the Clown Fish's colors and not see the marks of his make-up artist?
Walking in German Village this weekend, I had a less-euphoric experience with nature that touches on the "why" of that "how". Dave and I were walking along the brick streets of southern columbus when I noticed a small defect in the sidewalk the size of a fifty-cent piece. We never stopped moving, but as I looked down I noticed it was the grey remains of a baby bird, small wings perfectly outstretched as though in flight. His body was flat and had few remaining feathers on it; ants were trudging in and out of the holes that had developed in his delicate body, carrying on the process of decay. I would rather not know what exactly the ants were carrying as they were walking away.
The ducks and the dead baby bird represent two problems: the problem of pleasure, and the problem of imperfection. When I look at all of creation and its enormously unnecessary attention to detail and variety, I see God. But when others look at that exorbitant creation, they see the dead baby birds - it's not enough that it contains the ability to be incomprehensibly and impractically enjoyable, because it's not perfect. Which is an absolutely true problem.
But that dead baby bird is exactly why I do believe in God. I couldn't put hope in the existing goodness in the world if I didn't believe the world has been broken, damaged. To me, that assurance of brokeness is one of the truest things keeping me sane in a world that seems to be full of contradictions. Something is undeniably wrong, but then something is undeniably right as well. I could not believe in God were it not for my freedom of choice; if we can choose to love, that means we can choose to hate, and for the choices to be real the results must be real as well. Every night at six'o'clock we see its very real symptoms on the news. This truth also, the truth of corruption, is an elementary admittance that God must, and does, make. This world seems to be an apple filled with worms, and believing in God means being able to both admit the presence of the disease and the sweetness of the fruit as it was made to be.
Who's really persuaded that what we have here, an imperfect world diseased with worms and filled with dead baby birds, is all that we have and nothing more? Our base hunger for a perfect world is too strong to be denied and will very certainly not be met here in this place. I believe there's an apple untouched by worms, a tree where baby birds are born and don't fall out of their nests, a place where our cravings will be satisfied. Imperfection will no longer be a problem, and Pleasure will be enjoyed uncorrupted. In that place, the food will still be spiced, only with more precision and variety; and the flowers will still have colors, only with more vibrance and creativity; and if I'm lucky, that place will still have ducks, but with brighter orange feet.
I'm grateful for what spices and flowers and ducks we have here, but am glad I can call it all both broken and good and look forward to the best that is yet to come.
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