Dinosaurs

The theme for our Fat Tuesday Follies was dinosaurs. Becky, our church goddess, is amazingly creative and had dinosaurs ready for me to juggle and a slew of dinosaur jokes to share. 

Why can't a T-Rex clap?
Because they are extinct.

Why can't you hear a Pterodactyl pee? 
Think it's the silent "p"? No, they're extinct too.

In case you are wondering, dinosaurs are painful to juggle. There are sharp, pointy things that pierce your flesh, but anything for Jesus. Or at least anything for Becky.

Dinosaurs also scare me. I'm still in a Jurassic Park recovery group. I watched Jurassic World recently and thought I could handle Jurassic Park. The last time I tried to watch Jurassic Park was subbing for a science class in Angoon in 1994. I screamed through the entire thing, but that kept the class quiet. 

In case you are wondering, I am still unable to watch it without screaming through the entire movie. My kids know they can make me meltdown just by mentioning M. Arnold. "Oh Mr. Arnold" AND IT'S JUST HIS ARM! 

I think there are fifty billion Jurassic movies with all the same basic plot. People have the knowledge and desire to breed dinosaurs so they do and in each movie it turns out to be a bad idea. Maybe this time we will live with huge carnivorous creatures in harmony. 

The desire to recreate what is dead and the desire to make a lot of money are too intense to resist. 


The desire to recreate what is dead . . . 
I know the destruction desiring money can bring, but longing to recreate what is dead is haunting because it seems so noble. 

We hear from poets and novelists time and again about the horrifying consequences of resuscitating the dead. I remember some creepy story by Edgar Allen Poe about a monkey's paw and wishing someone who was dead would return. I was going to look it up but I'm too creeped out with the wind to read Poe tonight.

I want to be the first one to say that death and extinction stink. I'm not a big fan of either, but I recognize that we cannot resuscitate the past. We can't bring it back.

I also make gagging sounds when folks talk about "time to move on" or other trite phrases about leaving the past behind.  It's not like the alarm rings, you dump your sorrow, pretend like all is sunshine and rainbows, and move on down the road. 

We can't resuscitate what was. We also can't pretend like we don't carry the scars of grief with us everywhere we go. There is no moving on from a meaningful relationship anymore than there is moving on from losing a limb. You learn to live without it, but the scar remains.

That's why I frame my life in death and resurrection language. Things die. They no longer exist as they once were and it is okay to be really sad because that sucks. 

And it is okay to hope that a new creation and life may come out of death. A life that often surprises us. A life we sometimes don't even recognize. 

But it isn't cut off from what was; it doesn't leave behind what was meaningful. The risen Jesus carried the scars of the cross and that's how he was recognized. We don't get to recreate what was, but everything gets woven into our person, into something new.

Lent's approaching. Thinking about death. And dinosaur jokes. 

Except now I'm thinking about chickens and how I much prefer juggling my rubber chickens. They are after all relatives to dinosaurs.