About a month ago Carol-Jean displayed an array of hummingbird feeders on the deck behind our house. She deftly placed them next to hanging baskets of flowering plants so the little buzzing critters would feel some security, if they ever showed up for a drink. Well, happy hour came and went for weeks with no tiny birdies hovering in the vicinity of those mini-resevoirs of red sugar water. Then one day one of nature's two-inch helicopters materialized outside the window. No red throat, so we had attracted a female. She paused in the air as if sniffing for danger, then dipped her drinking beak into the feeding tube. We were now a station on the hummingbird express.
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They have come in rapid succession since that first exploratory visit. Brown and green with wings which beat so fast they cannot be detected except as a blurring of the air, the little hummers like to perch on the wire rim which supports my wife's potted tomato vines, leading us to speculate about how their tiny feet must like the cool metal frame. I understood they are the smallest birds, so I did a little research on the specifications of your typical Ruby Throated Hummingbird.
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Their average weight is only 1/8 ounce (3.1 g), yet their body temperature ranges from 105°-108°F (40.5°-42.2°C). Those supernaturally fast wings beat 40-80 times per second, and their little hearts beat from 250 per minute at rest, to an astonishing 1200 beats/min while feeding. And they are fast--from 30-60 mph (48-100 kph)!
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They don't live very long compared to humans, but can survive up to twelve years. It was at this point when I began wondering what hummingbirds believe about life after death.
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An innane thought, you say? Any creature who can hover and fly backwards deserves some kind of metaphysical consciousness, I say. And so my hummingbirds held an immaginary gathering at the tomato frame and rested at 250 heartbeats per minute while debating the possibility of immortality. I have a transcript of their deliberations which because you are my friend I will share with you. There were three of them--two females and a male. They never identified themselves, so I assigned them appropriate character names befitting the tiniest and most graceful of birds: Tina, Gracie, and Red.
TINA: I was telling Cora the crow just yesterday, birds must have an afterlife.
GRACIE: Cora always says we're here today and gone tomorrow. She's an extinctionist.
RED: Well, she knows the answer now--last evening the old crow got eaten by that butterscotch cat on Misty Lane.
TINA: Cora? No!
RED: He's been roaming the neighborhoods. Thinks he's a tiger. Told Cora to quit napping on the trash cans, but she never listened to anybody.
GRACIE: Do you think Cora is...well...still somewhere?
RED: Sure. She's inside that butterscotch cat.
GRACIE: No, Red, I'm serious. Do you think her consciousness...her self-awareness...goes on?
TINA: It must go on. She had such a life-force.
RED: She caw-cawed too loud and she liked to dump on Hyundais. My kind of bird.
GRACIE: Don't you ever wonder what happens after our wings stop beating?
RED: We get eaten by the cat.
GRACIE: All right--eaten by the cat, whatever. What happens to our thoughts, our minds, our separate selves?
RED: Way I see it, when you're dead, you're dead. The party's over, lights out.
TINA: What a terrible thought!
RED: It's just real, that's all.
GRACIE: You don't know that. For all you know, we might have an immortal soul.
RED: Yeah, and I might fly to the moon if I had a booster rocket.
TINA: You are awful.
GRACIE: He's in denial.
RED: Oh, right. And we're dysfunctional hummingbirds. Go find a wise owl and get professional help. Oh, wait. Owls eat hummingbirds, too, don't they?
GRACIE: Don't you want to live forever, Red?
RED: Sure. I want to fly to the moon, too. But I am what I am, a limited expression of biological life, passing through consciousness.
TINA: What good is it to have consciousness if all you get to do is surrend it to darkness in the end?
RED: Don't ask me. I didn't create the Cosmos. That's the Great Gull's job.
TINA: The great who--?
GRACIE: He's been reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull again. Look, Red, fact is nobody knows. We hope, we pray, we decide to believe. We talk to birds who claim to have had visions or near death experiences, but nobody really knows for sure.
RED: My point exactly.
TINA: So, if nobody knows for sure, it could go either way, right?
RED: I...well, I guess so, yeah.
TINA: Then what do I have to lose by hoping for eternity?
RED: Whoops....butterscotch cat at eleven o'clock! See you at the feeder at sunset.
GRACIE: See you--we're not done with this conversation!
TINA: I wonder if that cat believes in immortality, or just nine lives?
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[They zoom to separate treetops and are lost among the leaves.]
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Okay, that was fun...now it's your turn. Do you believe in eternal life or immortality of the soul? Do you know the difference, theologically? Traditionally, the word immortality has connoted a state which the soul has as part of its nature, whereas attaining eternal life requires some kind of action by humans and a response from the Divine. Another way to say it is immortality is something we have regardless of what happens (although existing forever does not guarantee a fulfilling experience); eternal life is something given to us by God. Anyway, the floor is open for your responses...
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Launching Theo-Blog One
Welcome to Rev Tom Shepherd's Theological Blog
This space may be some of the best and worst work I've done, because the nature of a Blog is by definition a hurried affair: Slam-jam-get-it-on-the-Internet-wham! So you get unfettered and relatively unedited remarks from the murky mind of a Unity theologian (may our tribe increase!) at moments of interlude when communication with the cyber-Cosmos seems a necessary endeavor. I also declare forthwith that these remarks represent the opinions of no other institution, religious perspective, 0r organization but TW Shepherd, Inc. (And there ain't no Inc.) Although theological in premise, they will doubtless spill over into many other categories. So, without further weaseling and warning, let's play Theo-Blog!
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We'll start with something non-controversial, like...oh, how about politics?
Theology of Deception: George W. Bush
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In my best theological opinion, George W. Bush is a hypocrite and a terrible president. His rigidity is not a virtue but a fetish, and he has lied and obfuscated to the American public from the beginning. Can anyone fail to see that the reason he invaded
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Movement in consciousness is an inside job. Although studies in social anthropology tell us that massive upheavals can alter belief patterns--seacoast tribes driven inland will eventually worship forest gods--nevertheless, those changes are dangerous to the health and well-being of the group. Some cultural shifts mean the end of an ethnic or religious identity. Well-meaning Christian missionaries, who wanted to help natives attain salvation and civilization, in fact gave them neither, imparting disease and cultural dissolution instead. The gospel according to Gene Roddenberry should be heeded: Thou shalt not violate the Prime Directive--when you mess with the natural evolution of other cultures, you do so at great peril to their very existence.
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After twenty years as an American soldier, I feel comfortable speculating about the frustration which our troops must be experiencing in
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Theology can give us tools to look at life through the eyes of faith. As I look at the mess created by the most theological president in recent history, I find myself praying for a sensible agnostic to take the reins of state and steer us away from the Edge of the World, toward which the Rev. Mr. Bush is galloping with apocalyptic glee, even as the climate warms and the villagers we hastened to aid are crushed under the wheels of our chariots of war.
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Your comments and replies are invited.
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