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| Bible used by my great grandparents. |
Those first
Christians were not able to email their epistles. They knew nothing about a
printing press or the great book it would someday produce, sponsored by the
king of an island off the coast of France.
They knew
how to agree and they knew how to disagree. They disagreed about how much of
their Jewish inheritance could be adapted. They argued about dietary laws. They
argued about circumcision. Argument became an undeclared sacrament, still vigorous
in the hundreds of Christian churches, traditions and denominations, which
continue to divide like melting icebergs.
Still
unsettled is the question of who’s at the center of worship. Some say it is
God, and the object of worship is to become more like God. That is a challenge,
once you ponder what God allowed Job, Eve and any number of innocents executed
in American prisons to endure.
Others
think the center of worship is the worshiper, asking favors of prosperity and
health from God, who at first glance might seem to have distributed those
favors randomly, with some Christians winning an impersonal game of chance and
some losing. Scholars have rejected any reference to this as the bingo myth.
I suspect
that I was born with a vibrant God gene, because I have always believed in God,
despite gaps in acting out that belief.
I’ve sat in
on computer chats about the name of God. I’ve heard lots of suggestions, such
as the Divine, Creator, Love, Higher Power, Father, Mother, Father-Mother, a
few others. God is Just, but I pray to
God as Mercy. During most of my life I have known God by familiar names, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the blessed Trinity, one God.
My grandpa
had a bunch of names. Friends called him Bill, teachers called him William,
kids called him Mr. Olmstead. They were all good names, and correct, but he’s
Grandpa to me. Same thing about the many names of God, who’s still God to me.
My bingo
gene card gave me loving parents of Victorian persuasion, children and
grandchildren of shining character and intellect, friends with a high capacity
for tolerance, all of the childhood diseases of the late 1920s, pleasure in reading
and writing, a rare disease of the brain which I’ve discussed excessively elsewhere,
and a belief in God which has evolved only as I’ve begun to grasp the infinity
of the Infinite. God is never surprised, but God has surprises for the rest of
us. Father John Loftus, an Irish Columban and close friend, was ejected from China by the Communists back in the last century. He recommended living in terms of Catholic beliefs because "even if they turn out not to be correct in all details, it is still a great way to spend your life."
God’s gifts
to each of us include an amount of time for this life. If there’s a formula,
nobody knows what it is. I appreciate most of the 87 years I’ve been given so
far, and I accept changes that come with age and experience, even though I
would get out of them if I could. Ever since I bought my first typewriter at
age 12 I have done a lot of my thinking through my fingertips. Now there’s a
coordination problem when I punch the letters on my computer keyboard. More and
more my fingers touch a key I did not choose, or touch no key at all. More and
more my thoughts flicker out like candles in the wind before I get them written
down. So I’m cutting back my blogs. Thank you for staying with me this far, and please don't go away.
© A. E. P. Wall
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