Born to Love

A friend of mine once wrote in a song, "You were born to love."

That was true when you were born, and it is still true now. Anytime you are not living up to this ideal, understand that you were still born to it, even if you are falling short.

And it is never too late to make a change.

God's not a drug, and you are not going to be able to get - or stay - high on him. The change, the call to discipleship is something you have to respond to. God can give you the motivation to love, but the choice to do so - this has always been up to you, and is only going to happen if you are the one to do it. You are not a prisoner of your life, you are the author of it. Time to write a better story.

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin." (Mother Theresa)

Red-heads

More info about Neanderthals: at least some of them were red-heads. My elder daughter is a red head, as was my wife's mother. No wonder I'm so interested in Neanderthals... I've married into their clan! (My wife will kill me for that one. :)

Seriously, I find it fascinating that we are now learning so much about an ancient people through their DNA. Much more interesting to me, at least, than SCI is.

Will the circle be unbroken?

Where there is hope there is love. And where there is love there is hope.

Lake Ontario is drying up

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/nyregion/22oswego.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The article describes Lake Ontario as being down seven inches. But you can't know how much that is, unless you've seen it.

I have.

My parents live on an island in Lake Ontario, and at the base of their property is a limestone beach. It is one of my favourite spots in the world, because the water is clear and not murky at all, and I can dive in and explore a huge range of underwater terrain. There are lots of interesting fish swimming there, and I enjoy going down and cataloguing the various fish species I've seen (I once saw an eel, which my mother was not thrilled to learn.)

The last time I was up there, two weeks ago, I did not recognize the waterfront. The water is an acre away from where erosion has washed away the cliffs, which the water can no longer come close to reaching. There is now a huge expanse of limestone terrain (I won't call a lot of it beach now - some of it, now, is simply not close to the water.)

The extent to which the water has retreated from the shore is incredible. It is literally like going to the sea, and finding that the sea is drying up. (Lake Ontario, if you've never been there, looks like the ocean.)

So far in my world, global warming has meant more pleasant falls, and shorter winters. But this? It is dramatic, and frightening.

I Knew it

I've often complained that there is a certain amount of speciesism involved in our portrayal of Neanderthals. We've seen continuous paleontological evidence arise of extremely sophisticated Neanderthal behaviour.  From making tar anaerobically, to tanning hides, to making flutes, all the way to burying their dead, Neanderthals did things that are so cultural and complex, that it is ludicrous to think that they didn't talk.

If you doubt the sophistication of Neanderthals, you only have to watch a demonstration of the Levallois core shaping technique they used for making stone tools. Few people can master it, even after reading the instructions or even being taught by a modern stone knapping expert. Look how complex it is.

Now comes all but certain proof that Neanderthals likely spoke as well as we do. Ever since the Neanderthal genome project came along, paleontology pundits have been predicting that the Neanderthals would not exhibit the two human mutations for the foxp2 gene, the gene most widely associated with speech. I knew they would find the modern gene, even though researchers appeared confident Neanderthals would not have it. 

The foxp2 gene in primates appears to be supremely important, such that it rarely mutates. Even in its prior form, it appeared to confer significant survival advantages. Only the changes' ability to enable human language appears to be behind why humans could have a different version of the gene.

And we now know the Neanderthals had the same version of the gene that we do.

http://www.canada.com/topics/technology/science/story.html?id=61d14715-25bb-4755-b96b-d0acd0cecb74

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303282,00.html

Although researchers caution that this is only part of the story, I think it is time for much of that debate to pass now. There's always been strong evidence of Neanderthal speech, ever since the discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid, showing that Neanderthal throats were constructed much like ours. Even the ancestors of Neanderthals, Homo Heidelbergensis, show evidence of speech, in that their hearing was, like ours, adapted for the audio frequencies in which speech occurs.

There are many reasons the Neanderthals could have died out, without having to continue the old assertions about them being dumb and mute. Some of these reasons are so obvious, that I cannot figure out why they aren't taken more seriously than the now non-existent linguistic advantage argument.

Neanderthals were not, for instance, adapted to long distance travel the way we are. Even as out of shape as we are today, most of us are capable of walking 40 to 50 kilometers a day, with nothing more than a couple of bottles of water and a sandwich packed with us. Neanderthals could not do this - they were built for ambush, able to perform short feats of incredible strength. A tribe of Neanderthals could stab and wrestle an elk to the ground in close quarters, and the fact that they are commonly found with rodeo rider injuries suggests that this is exactly what they did. This made them great hunters; for large game, possibly even slightly better than we are. But it came at the cost of making them poor social networkers, due to their inability to go far.

We on the other hand developed physical abilities related to social networking. Long distance travel is important if you are more than going out and meeting your neighbours, but sending ambassadors to foreign lands. And there is significant evidence that this is just what we did - our ancestors are often found with stone tools quarried from rocks that are not native to their territory. This never happens with Neanderthals, because they just couldn't travel that far.

The ability to develop networks of far-flung friends who could help you survive a famine or drought was probably what set us apart, and allowed us to survive. When Neanderthals ran out of game, they had nowhere to go for help.

We did.

But it is time to put to rest the idea that Neanderthals died out because they were more inept than us. We now know that Neanderthals were large-brained people who could talk, probably as well as we do. We may like to think they died out because we are smart, and they were dumb, but the evidence increasingly disproves this.

I wrote last time about learning to love through those who do not feel the way you do. It is the people you love who do not love you back that teach you how to love most truly: because it then isn't about what you can get out of it. Loving people who do not feel the same way about me - it taught me how to love hard, love without fear, and has made me a better friend, husband, and father.

That is how love should be - "Love envies not, love wants not itself."

And the good book also says, "If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you?" It isn't even love, if this is all you can feel. You must learn to be able to be profoundly affected by everyone you meet - even those who forget you.

Learning how to love selflessly

I have a friend who worries that he always directs conversations towards himself.... That it always ends up being about him.

I'm not sure I've ever said it aloud before, but I worry about the same thing. If not concious about it, I can easily get rambling about things that are important to me, and get so caught up in what I am talking about, that I lose sight of the fact that the person I am with may not even find my lecture all that interesting!

It helps to be surrounded by family. There is so much going on in a family that it just is not possible for my life to always be about me. But being interested in family does not quite qualify as selflessness. They are family, and it is not an exceptional shift of focus to take my mind off myself and switch it to my family. We can be quite selfish with family without seeming to be. Well, I can be at any rate.

I recently realized that the purest manifestation of selflessness I can muster is to love people who do not know it. I am not speaking here of romantic love or attraction, but rather the deep and profound well that empathy and compassion are drawn from: the love that is sitting, listening, and truly *grasping*.

To grasp someone's existence - to really begin to understand what it is to be that someone else, and to let your heart warm when you realize exactly how much they try to be their best selves - that is love.And they must not know you know, for it would seem like pity!

And as I come to realize it, I also realize that these are only baby steps... I have truly only just begun to learn how to love.

The Secret Admirer

I've written my wife a couple of songs she doesn't know about. I'm going to surprise her with them at the opportune time. This is one of them - a song I wrote, and which a few pals on the Internet helped me to create... it isn't quite finished, but it is getting there. :)

TIME: Christianity's Image Problem

An interesting poll is being reported on in the latest TIME - Christianity's image is waning - and is waning even among Christians!

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1667639,00.html

So what is behind it? I have some theories, of course. For instance, Christianity is not as focused on developing the interior life as it has historically been. There are some Christians focused on this, such as Max Lucado, and there is a resurgence of interest in Henri Nouwen. But there is a lot more politics from the pulpit these days, isn't there?

horse business

I am waiting at the riding stable where my daughter takes riding lessons. Out in the field is a little baby horse, less than a week old.... Just a foal. It is all black and a moment ago it was frolicking. Very cute.

The sun is going down and the sky is red. And I am taking my daughter to dinner. Life is good.