There Will Always Be a Duck

My grandpa used to ask me, “What’s the difference between a duck?”  His bushy eyebrows would wiggle and his face would light up with the joy and mirth of this wonderfully terrible, incomprehensible joke.  I would say, “a duck and what?” with consternation and a hesitant contempt for this question.  I was never quite sure if I was missing something.  He always repeated the questions until I sighed, rolled my eyes and said, “I don’t know, what’s the difference between a duck?”  With fluent glee, he would nearly clap his hands and say,

“One of its legs is both the same.”  I still don’t get it.  I’m not sure it was ever gettable.  I tell that joke all the time and it is so much fun to feel the hesitant contempt and be confident that the answer is mine alone. 

Sometimes, there is no satisfying answer that ties everything together.  The answerer must be confused.  Maybe they are having an aneurism.  My grandpa was a man of vast intelligence.  He invented things with patents, solved problems that contributed to the home computer and listened to big bands on speakers he made himself.  I still have those.  They get loud and stay clean.  His joke and his mirth did not come from any lack of mental acuity.  He just thought it was more fun to give an answer that made me ask more questions.

Answering questions with satisfyingly complete answers may not be the most authoritative literary approach.  It certainly does satisfy the reader’s desire to be told what to do.  But I’m not sure that being told what to do is healthy for our bond to eternity.  God himself gives us dangerous choices and the responsibility for the consequences that go with them.  He risks his heart for ours.  He made us, like him, to be risk takers and dangerous livers.  It is man made religion that has attempted to simplify and order this unexplainable relationship between us and our creator.  We don’t really want to know the answers if they define our limits.  If we did, we would stop exceeding the limits we have already given ourselves.  There has yet been no time in history where any kinds of limits, man made or otherwise, have provided boundaries that were not broken. 

I think it’s because we are bonded to eternity.  We want to believe that the quality of our lives is more than we can imagine, unlimited by our current expectations.  There is another surprise and more effort required beyond every horizon.   Every answer leads to more questions.  They will never run out.

Enough of the five steps to financial security and seven habits of effectiveness.  The trite clichés about marriage, parenting and making my boss happy are shallow and short term.  I am only willing to keep asking questions and seeking the answers together as we follow this narrow, winding, dangerous path.  It is an exciting journey that requires faith, endurance, patience, strength and the investment into and from those on the path together.  I do not presume to know any answer or it’s appropriate application in a completed form.  I do not expect that such a revelation will ever exist for we are creatures of endless depth and our creator constantly provides new context. 

Exploration, discovery and expectation are built into us as rudimentary elements of our relationship to our creator.  He leads our goose chase exploration, gives clues to our discoveries and feeds our expectations with laughter and invitation.  The greatest we can hope for is to ever be participants of his revelation and wisdom.  It is always more and better than we imagine.  Good enough?

Consider the alternative.  We can know.  We can have no questions left, no discoveries to make.  We can reach some sort of state of complete experience where there will never be another surprise, another jaw dropping sharp intake of breath in dumbstruck awe. 

And we have eternity to enjoy this condition of “completeness.”  God is done creating.  We know everything he and the fat baby angels know.  Our knowledge and wisdom is all wrapped up in a neat package with definable edges and a pretty bow. 

Sounds infinitely boring.  What the hell are we supposed to do (note hell inference.)?  What will make eternity interesting?  How will we increase?  What happens to the creators creating?  Are angels really fat babies?

The process of discovery is closely related to a confusion that is only comfortable in the context of faith.  We can know that our creator will create.  He has invited us into it.  We will never exhaust the capacity to discover more and be in greater joyful awe.  That is a quality of eternity I look forward to. 

Hope you’ll join me.

Grampa Bernie Joke:

Q. What is the difference between a duck?

A. One of its legs is both the same.

Next question…