I talk to the dog. I talk to the cat. Sometimes, when I’m out for a walk, I talk to a crow or a magpie. 
I’ve never talked to a toad. But apparently Mary Oliver does. She wrote a short reflection, a kind of prose poem, about her conversation with a toad: “He was just sitting there. It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on is sand-coloured head and his webbed feet. I squatted beside him… He didn’t move. I began to talk…”
How we humans love to talk! Every silence, like a vacuum, must be filled. We talk about politics – mostly American politics, tragically. About sports, food, the stock market. And all Canadians talk about the weather. 
If we have nothing else to talk about, we talk about having nothing to talk about. 
Mary Oliver talked with the toad about time. About the terrors of the night. About summer, and “how good the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.”
As if a toad would do much thinking about these things. Do toads even have shoulder blades? I suppose they must, since we share some four-limbed proto-ancestor, back before history began. 
History originated, in fact, with talk. Life was short, often brutish. So we told stories --“A wandering Aramean was my father…” -- to give our children a way of remembering what happened before they existed. 
All animals learn from experience. Quail learn to bring their buddies to a bird feeder; deer learn to avoid an electrified fence. To some extent, too, animals can pass along their experience. Moose teach their calves which plants to eat; cats teach their kittens to use a litter box. 
But when the teacher dies, her accumulated wisdom dies with her. 

Transmitting wisdom
We aren’t the only animals with language. Whales, dolphins, elephants and the great apes all seem to have sophisticated communication skills, even if we can’t decode it. But as far as we can tell, they lack any way of passing that knowledge along to succeeding generations. Except, possibly, by telling stories. 
Disparagingly, we call that oral history. Undependable. Subject to distortion. We forget that most of the Bible, to take one instance, was oral history, before anyone wrote it down.
Writing changed everything. Whether as cuneiform scratches, Hebrew consonants, or digital coding, the act of writing distinguished the person’s knowledge from the person’s life. 
Wisdom no longer perished with the wise one. 
And so we can still learn from Plato and Aristotle, from Pascal and Newton, from Mahatma Gandhi and Teilhard de Chardin.
We talk about almost anything except feelings. Perhaps we’re ashamed of having feelings. Just try opening a conversation in the grocery line about your lover leaving, your bladder leaking, or the voices in your head. Watch people move away. 
But sometimes feelings are what we really need to talk about. We can talk out the story of our loss, our pain, until the story itself becomes a memory rather than an open wound. 
Humans can do that. Toads can’t. Mary Oliver ended her musings by noting the toad’s reaction: “He … did not move, blink or frown, not a tear fell from those gold-rimmed eyes as the refined anguish of language passed over him.”
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Copyright © 2016 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
        To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN

Ralph Milton called last week’s column “a head-scratcher.” Good. That was what I wanted. 

Isabel Gibson chose to rise to the bait: “When the tree falls, the vibrations exist, but ‘sound’ occurs only when something that can hear those vibrations actually does hear them. The hearer doesn't create the tree or the vibrations, but is essential to the experience of sound.
“In the same way, perhaps, no human creates God (or any pantheon of gods) or God's vibrations, but may still be essential to the experience of that presence.
“As to whether the Big Bang made a bang, only when we or someone have ears to hear it.”

The reasoning that “if no one can discern the presence of God then God does not exist" caused Steve Roney to add, “But you should have followed with the note that God is indeed directly discernable. He is not discerned through the [physical] senses, but that is no surprise. Neither is love, or happiness, or any number of other things the existence of which we do not doubt.”

Ted Wilson challenged my assertion: “There is, as far as I can tell, no evidence of evolution ever reversing itself.”
Ted suggested, “The behaviour of some those running for the office of President of the United States calls that into question.”

Laurna Tallman offered a more serious rebuttal: “Last year some researchers discovered that a type of ant, if placed in a particular type of environment, reverted to a former genetic type. The researchers concluded that the genes for many types of ants remained latent in the ant they started studying, and that it could evolve ‘backwards’ if the environmental conditions required different characteristics. If ant genes can revert to adapt, other genes can revert to adapt.”

And this from Frieda Hogg: “May I suggest that evolution is God's way of creation. Obviously the Genesis account of creation is just a story by a writer from way back who had a great imagination. It seems to me that evolution as creation is very possible; as scripture says that "God is from everlasting to everlasting," so God has had plenty of time to do it.”

Kerry Brewer wrote, “What a powerful paraphrase of Psalm 27! You hit the nail on the head.”

The subject of dying alone continues to generate some mail. Larry Smith sent this: “I am convinced my dad ‘arranged’ to die alone. In June of 1975, he was having a terrible time with cancer. Emaciated and jaundiced and in a great deal of pain, he weighed less than 100 pounds. My stepmother was not emotionally strong. She and I had visited in his hospital room until late the previous night. As we entered his room the next morning, I knew he was gone as we moved through the doorway. His oxygen mask had no condensation on it and the bedding was neatly folded around him. There had been no phone call from the hospital in the night. I was able to accept that he wouldn’t have wanted his wife (and perhaps me too) to witness his last few moments but also believe that he was not afraid to accept death, as a part of life.”

Likewise, Peter Scott wrote, “I wanted to weigh in briefly on the dying alone conversation between Tom Watson and Isobel Gibson. I think Isobel hit the nail on the head when she suggested  that introversion/extroversion may have a lot to do with preferences in the matter and I think the choice should rest completely with the dying individual without them having to get angry to make their choice clear. At such a critical point in life should an introvert have to be concerned about the contrary wishes of some extroverted relative? For goodness sake at least let them die the way they choose.
“I guess the corollary to that is let them die when they choose as well. I realise that the church and the medical profession have resisted that thought with all their might but … how is it reasonable or even kind to punish people who wish to die for any reason that seems good to them by refusing them the opportunity and even the assistance they might need to have as painless a death as possible?”

Fran Ota added this: “My mother died 'alone'. Except for her cat. No one could have predicted it nor been there. She called all her family, which was her usual Thursday evening routine. She lay in bed and read one of her favourite mysteries. She went to sleep and just didn't wake up. The coroner didn't do an autopsy, as there was no evidence of any trauma. She just quietly left us. My siblings and I all agreed that's how we want to go.”

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PSALM PARAPHRASES

The NRSV calls Psalm 63 a psalm of David, when he was thirsty in the Judean wilderness. But I wonder if there is more than one kind of wilderness. 

1   Crowds of people crush me. 
They bump and bounce my mind; 
they break my concentration. 
I feel like nothing more than a means to an end, merely a cog in the machinery. 
I long for the gentle touch of loving fingers, the intimate whisper of acceptance. 
2   So I have come looking for you, Lord, in your holy places. 
3   In this dimmed light, in this hushed silence, I sense your presence.
4   I wish I could feel you as near me in the rabid frenzy of life in the city core. 
I want to reach out and touch you in the marketplace as well as the chancel. 
5   Then I will not feel alone; you will be part of every thought and every breath. 
6   I will know you at my desk and in my den, in my bed and in my bathtub.
7   Nothing will come between us. 
8   And I will hold you close in the forest of my fears.

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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YOU SCRATCH MY BACK…
Ralph Milton has a new project, called Sing Hallelujah – the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca
Isabel Gibson's thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com
Alan Reynold's weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap,” write reynoldsrap@shaw.ca
Wayne Irwin's "Churchweb Canada," an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>
Alva Wood's satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town are not particularly religious, but they are fun; write alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” – ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at twatson@sentex.net

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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