The Theological Implications of Ant Poetry

It has been quite a year, and I am very proud of my sons. They were never taught the things they should know to be self-sufficient, and I have been spending a lot of energy teaching them. It takes more time, patience, and a willingness to accept things not exactly correct to have them learn how to do laundry, cook, clean house, shop.

They are growing very quickly.

It has been my custom to go to each of them at bedtime, tuck them in, sit beside them, talk over their day, pray over, bless them.

Isaac has asked me to stop.

When pressed, he said it was because he felt he was getting too old for it.

Jeremiah looked anxious.

"I can still come pray with you each night if you want, Jeremiah."

"OK!" He was relieved. Jeremiah will always want that from me.

The sleeping trouble has gotten worse the last few days. Last night was only three hours.

But it will be OK. A part of me is irritated at my ex... running through imaginary conversations with her...

"At least I didn't abandon my family," my imaginary self says to her.

"I didn't abandon my family!" she snaps back. "I am willing to help any time you want, just call!"

"Yes, you did abandon us. You abandoned your family the moment you abandoned your vows."

I always sound so rational, poised, calm, and wise in these imaginary scenarios.

The irritation I am feeling lately toward her is normal. I will work through it. I recognize the stages. But I think it is why I am having trouble sleeping.

Life sucks, and life is wonderful.

Brenda felt life is unfairly painful.

It's a common thought.

If God is omniscient and omnipotent why doesn't HE DO SOMETHING!!!

Let's unpack that a little.

Omniscient and omnipotent doesn't mean He can do everything. There are many things God cannot do.

He cannot cease being who He is. He cannot do evil (if He can, He isn't the God I know). He cannot cease loving.

We believe He is love. We believe He is love because we sense love is the best of who we are. When we fully love, fully care for others, we feel... different. Different from... the least of what we can be (selfish, self centered, eager to pull all the toys into a big pile and sit on it).

Moses asked God if he could look at Him, the Lord basically told him he couldn't handle it.

The interchange between Moses and the Lord gives us the sense that God is so much more than we can handle... there is the suggestion that all Moses could be permitted to see was the goodness of God as He passed from view because anything more and the patriarch would have vanished under the intense glare of majesty.

Even that was so intense Moses' face glowed for years afterwards.

I think there are other things God cannot do. I think He cannot help but love, that He is the source of the emotion we call love... the pale moody thing we call love is just a fleshly, mortal echo of true love.

I think love is about caring. I think love is about reaching out with our hearts toward another, and that if God has a need, it is the need to have someone to care for... someone to express love to.

He requires sharing and caring and loving so much that He is a community unto Himself, themself. A trinity of divine love.

And that wasn't enough for Him. He needed to express love further, so He created powerful spiritual, eternal entities, angels, so He might love them, and they could learn to love as well.

And still He wanted to love more. So He created us.

What a wonder that is. He created beings capable of not loving so His love could extend past reciprocal angelic love. He could love even creatures who had trouble loving back.

He created creatures free to choose. We often decide that we want what we want when we want it, and we can forgo the whole caring thing altogether if we choose.

We can abandon our values, our morals, our desire to emulate Him. We can abandon our families and our vows.

We can hurt each other.

It is my suspicion that the mind is much greater than the brain. I suspect that the brain constrains us. I conjecture that Jeremiah is mentally much, much more, if only the frailty of his physical brain did not force him to relate to this world with such restraints.

I suspect that there are other things about us that are larger than what our bodies can contain or express. I guess our spirits are larger, more than four dimensions, and we act the way we do because we get so caught up in the weaknesses of flesh, of being mortal.

I suspect God wanted to love us so much, wanted to hold us so close, that He took our form just to create a bridge of understanding between He and us so we might see a path of love leading to Him.

I've heard people liken the incarnation of God to one of us becoming an ant, to live among ants when we know so much more.

Imagine what that might be like.

Imagine a person, a great person of intellect and grace and beauty, stepping into the form of an ant. Imagine someone with the traits that are the best of us, a mixture of the best of Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickenson, Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill... becoming an ant.

Probably wouldn't fit in well in ant society. Their social structures of work and duty would leave very little room for philosophy or imagination or grace or poetry.

I suppose if such a person were an ant, it would probably end badly. Ants would not understand. The insectified person would probably write a poem on the wall of their tunnels, or tell the other ants to pause in their labors and to take a moment to enjoy the blueness of the sky, observe the floating clouds, pause and search their antish hearts for things that might lift them up, out, and beyond their labor-filled lives.

And they would kill him.

The world isn't a very nice place. People hurt and are hurt. Some take delight in inflicting pain on others. Too many children are hurt too often. Too many wives are beaten. Too many egomaniacs inflict suffering on those in their control.

But such pain comes from the freedom we have been given... the freedom to be selfish. It's a characteristic that makes us less loveable (yet He does).

I know God does reach into the world and write poetry on the tunnels of our lives. I've seen it. But more than that, much more than that, He is always there to draw near, to breathe on us, to hold us, let His love flow over and through us.

As much as He can, for we are very busy screaming about what we want and when we want it, too much so to hear Him whispering reassuring kindness into our hearts.

I suppose if I listened for Him more instead of running selfish imaginary narratives through my mind I might sleep a little better.

Isaac doesn't want me to come up and tuck him in, pray over him. I've told him I will still pray for him each night, but I will do it from my own bed.

Isaac is pulling away a little, a healthy thing, the very thing I have been working on when I have taught him how to sew, or do laundry, or iron clothes, or cook meals.

There is a part of me that feels a twinge of sadness at it. I want him to want me.

But... giving him freedom to make his own choices is part of what a parent who loves his child does.

Post Script: I was just sitting here on the couch, proof reading this post, when Isaac poked his head into the living room to say good night. He impulsively ran over to the couch, snuggled up to me, hugged me, and asked me to pray for him. I pressed my face into his dreadlocks and whispered a prayer and a blessing. He wiggled happily.

Life is wonderful.