The breaking news from stem cell researchers in Japan and Wisconsin is comparable to the coming of the Christ for me. It has nothing to do with the ethical debate George Bush pretended to monitor. It's not that now all the politicians can breathe a sigh of relief. It's simply that skin cells can be transformed into performers of embryonic stem cell functions. This morning's report on msnbc says that skin cells, when mixed with just a few genes, could theoretically be changed into sperm and egg cells."But nobody is planning on doing that."
Fair enough. Obviously the science here is beyond most of us, and I, a ramshackle thinker, have absolutely no idea how they come upon these things. But we can grasp it, through a glass darkly, with a dim understanding that can be thrilling. Think about it for a minute. The most far-reaching implication is that a few microscopic cells could be ultimately reconstituted into a human being, a clone of sorts, you again? Doesn't this also have implications for the support of theories of reincarnation and eternal life? Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. And then a few lingering cells in those ashes become.... you again!?
I've been blessed since childhood, brought up in the way I should go. I have seldom doubted that there is eternal life, that there is world upon world, "more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio". I was always thrilled by the words "In my father's house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you." and "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." I've never been too concerned about clinging to my body or having it again in some earth-clone eternal kingdom. I do believe though in the communion of saints and the life everlasting. Mysteries abound.
I've been searching frantically this morning for a passage from Annie Dillard regarding Job and God's conversation about the foundations of the world. God asks Job "Where were you when I created the foundations of the earth?" Annie Dillard says Job should have said "I was there, God, I was there!" Because we are made from the very stuff of stars, we are part and parcel of the heavens, we are part of the thread of life that is made from bits and pieces of eternity. How could it be otherwise?
Didn't Einstein posit that energy can be neither created nor destroyed? So there's nowhere for us to go, except right here in the universe forever. Little bits of us are sloughed off every day as we go about our daily tasks. DNA can be retrieved from a hairbrush or a computer keyboard. We're leaving little bits everywhere. Everything is changing and moving and shifting and blowing. Who knows what wonders God hath wrought?
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