You Know the Old Silly Question
by Andrew Hanson
By Andrew Hanson, March 5, 2014
(Written for the dedication of Kiefer and Quinn)
You know the old silly question
Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
Let me go on record right now
They did
When I was younger
The Bible story about Adam
Being made out of clay
Eve out of a rib bone
Made me uneasy
It couldn’t be right
I’d skinned my knee by then
And broken my arm
And clay or mud or whatever
Didn’t quite cut it
Now as a man with
A wife
Children
And grandchildren
Of my own
I am morally
And mortally certain
That our first parents had
Belly-buttons
I know this because
I’ve watched the birth
Of two of my children
And one of my grandchildren
And also because I live
In a world where men
Have written most of the history and
Call the shots
Being a man myself I know
It was a man who decided
That God made us
Out of mud and bone
It’s how we men think
We make things
And we love the things we make
Material
Philosophical
Political
Religious
And we get so attached to these things
That we believe they’re real
And we act as if they’re real
And we act as if they were so precious
That they are more to be valued than
Life itself
So we men have made a world
Without consulting our wives
And lovers
And other assorted female members
Of the human race
Because we could have our way
Because we are physically bigger
And stronger
Because we could
So we men have made a world
In which we
Our children
And grandchildren
Fight and die in wars to protect
To further
To promote
To protect
These things that aren’t real
These material
Philosophical
These political
These religious things
That we made up
Just like the man
Made up the mud man
And bone woman
In Genesis
Adam and Eve had
Belly-buttons because
They were born
Just like we are born
Just like Kiefer and Quinn were born
Gestated by God
Connected to God
By the umbilical cord of life
The umbilical cord of the love
That makes life possible
ASIDE
That Jesus gave birth to twins
In a specially decorated Garden of Eden
Attended by an angel or two that
Had gone with him through the heavenly equivalent
Of Lamaze training
Isn’t so hard to imagination
Given the current notions
Maybe this is why Jesus
Decided to be born
Maybe he wanted to participate in
The entire human experience
Jesus came to explain to us
What is real
To show us how to live a real life
In an unreal world
To help us understand why
Babies and little children
Whose world is not yet
The world we men have made
Offer a glimpse of
What is really real
What life is all about.
That’s why Jesus said
My kingdom is not of this world
That’s why he told us that we men
Had it all wrong
The real world
Was about healing
And kindness
And restoring
And forgiving
And loving your neighbor
Even those neighbors who
Were your enemies
That we had it all wrong
About judgment
About sin
I’ve spoken to men
Who want to toughen Jesus up
They want him to do the things
A man should do when confronted
By evil
By injustice
They like the clearing the temple story
And turning over the tables of the moneychangers
And reminding me that Jesus will burn
Evildoers in hell forever
Or at least for some painful time
In a lake of fire
These men ignorantly believe
The same old foolishness
Violence
And threats of violence
Have never
Can never
Establish a peaceable kingdom
Here or in Heaven
These men forget that
Humankind was created
In God’s image
Not men’s image alone
I believe God is more
Woman than man
How else can you explain
Babies
When I asked Karen to tell me
About Quinn
She said something that
Gave an old cliché new meaning
She said
He’s the light of our lives
That made me think of other
Clichés that have been around
For a long time that involve
Light
Light at the end of a tunnel
A miracle
A new life
A new grace connection
A new chance to get it right
A new and better citizen
Born into the light of a kingdom
Not of this world
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