Walking in the Meme Light

I know I’m weird.

I take some folks off guard. They don’t know what to make of my weird ideas. Heck, I don’t know what to make of my weird ideas.

A weird idea isn’t necessarily a bad idea. Many ideas seemed weird when people first heard them. Yet many of those ideas turned out to be very powerful.

Still, I can understand how exposure to a continuing stream of weirdness could get old.

Perhaps that is why I lost my wife’s love.

Naturally my mind follows my heart, and I keep turning back to the idea that dominates my thoughts... my wife loves another.

I have a buddy who works across the hall from me. I wander in and out of his room two or three times a day, leaving a little trail of weirdness.

I think he kind of likes it, or at least he pretends to.

I suppose my faith, my beliefs, are a little weird for many folks.

Those beliefs were novel ideas at one time.

“Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

“Bless those who curse you.”

Each night I put my sons to bed, talk with them, pray over them. Then I change into pajamas in an empty room, crawl into an empty bed.

In one sense I feel pretty alone.

In another, I feel like the entire universe is keeping me company.

Interesting idea, that.

I was thinking about being alone while I walked in the woods this afternoon. And I started thinking about Adam.

He was pretty lonely.

Interesting idea.

It seems fairly clear it was a common thing for God to talk with Adam, much as I talk each night with my sons. You know, all that walking in the cool of the evening stuff.

So, Adam hung out with God.

Isn't that an amazing idea?! Imagine walking in that garden, under the moonlight, with God.

But it wasn’t enough.

God recognized Adam needed another:

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." Genesis 2:18

Yet, He did not give Adam what he wanted, not right away. Instead, he put Adam to work.

“Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.” Genesis 2:19-20

This is an interesting idea.

Adam had God with him, yet he was alone.

I find myself in a strange place. I find myself alone (well I’ve my kids, but they don’t count in this respect), without someone who can gaze with me at the decades ahead. It makes me feel like a rudderless ship.

But I’m not rudderless.

I’m a pretty fortunate man in that for me faith is so real, so very tangible. I sense God in the world around me. I so love the beauty of this world, and I am so lucky to be living in an age where I can gaze at images of microscopic and images of stellar wonders that were beyond the vision of previous generations. I rejoice in the smells, and tastes, and sights of this world.

I’m pretty fortunate in that I have experienced God so clearly in my life that I cannot feel truly alone.

Sure, I have the distance between me and God that everyone has had since those first orchard thieves. But I was designed to be connected to the universe, I was designed to walk in a very special garden in the cool of the evening, and that some day I will do that, and in some way, I do today.

Still... there is a part of me, a very sore place, that can hardly believe there isn’t anyone else in the bed with me.

How long did Adam work at naming animals? How long did God’s little gardner putter about the wonders and bounty of that beautiful place, but sighed because he was alone?

Isn’t that an odd idea?

He was alive in ways I cannot know, sharing a world with divinity in a way I haven’t felt, and still, he felt alone.

It took a long time for humans to move to where we are now. A lot of ideas.

Abraham told the world there was only one God. That was an idea which was considered very weird.

Moses told the world there was a living God who loved them, wanted to save them, guide them to a better place. Weird.

And Mary told the world she was pregnant with God Himself.

Weird hardly describes it. What a concept! God within the womb of a girl.

My faith is filled with such odd, such weird, ideas.

Ideas which shook the world.

Before I write another word, keep in mind I am aware my weird ideas rank nowhere near the import of those ideas. In fact, I’m pretty sure my ideas are probably quite wrong, and they will wither and die, as weak ideas should.

Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” for ideas, arguing they thrived or died, they propagate through culture and lives, a lot like the darwinian concept of natural selection. Good ideas, no matter how weird they may be, reproduce themselves through the generations.

Perhaps I’m like some creature which has strayed too near a glowing Chernobyl.

My brain produces weird memes.

I guess I’m saying that though I ache for what I have lost, I know I have someone eager to walk in a garden with me, once I leap out of this sin-filled world... I sense I am made to walk in His company.

I also know I was created to share my life with another, and in losing that it is only natural I ache.

I’ll be OK.

And to me, for now, standing in the light of that idea, it strikes me as a little weird.