Church Signs

Last week Rosean and I drove by a church sign that read:

WHY DIDN'T NOAH SWAT THE 2 MOSQUITOES?

Rosean laughed and amended it:

WHY DIDN'T NOAH SWAT THE 2 MOSQUITOES AS HE FLOATED DOWN THE WEST NILE?

What Noah didn't know (ah).

Friday and Saturday morning Rosean and I got up early and went out to Fossil Creek Reservoir with our coffees. (In case you ever need to know, Human Bean opens at 5 a.m.) With binoculars and a rather dated bird book we strolled to one of the bird blinds, sat a bit, strolled to the other blind, sat a bit more. We are not birders; we don't know anything about the culture and protocol of bird watching. We just witness all these little lives out at the Reservoir, each with its passions and trials, desires and attempts at fulfilment, births and endings. Yesterday two scarlet-eyed grebes called to each other in a way that caused my Scorpio partner to opine, "they want to get some." I was skeptical, but sure enough, soon they lifted their bodies and arched their necks in an elegant mating dance, a sort of side by side promenade across the surface of the water. We just loved this dance. We love all the dances, even the ones that make us sad.

I'm sure there are dozens of excellent sermons on the theme of Noah and the mosquitoes. After all, if we didn't have mosquitoes we wouldn't have swallows, those jewel-like darters. We wouldn't have the waterfowl who feast on larvae. In a terrible domino effect we'd lose entire ecosystems -- maybe the entire biosphere. Yet, in spite of our understanding of this fact, if it were entirely up to us we really would kill off all the mosquitoes. We'd have some rationale.

And, archetypally, the story of Noah really is wonderful. Imagine building a great hulking boat when you're living on a desert. Imagine waiting 40 years to be vindicated, 40 years before the waters rise. Imagine carrying the seeds of all future life with you on your ark, the craft shaped by your own hands and toil. And amongst the creatures is the mosquito. It works, you know?

But I think of all the little lives at the reservoir, and of the lives surrounding the reservoir in all the little (and not so little) houses, and of the lives in trees and at the edges of lawns. And I think, you know, we're Christian. We should put up one church sign and leave it until all the little plastic letters crumble and fall away, a sign like this:

CAN YOU EVEN F--ING BELIEVE THAT GOD WOULD PUT ON HUMAN FLESH AND LIVE AMONG US?

Or, as Saturday's Saint du Jour (St. Cyril of Alexandria) put it in the little daily meditation booklet Rosean and I read:

THE MOTHER OF GOD CONTAINED THE INFINITE GOD UNDER HER HEART, THE GOD WHOM NO SPACE CAN CONTAIN

Can you believe this message? It's the sort of fact that unravels your socks and sets your hair on fire so you have to get baptized just to put the flames out!