A Rich Thanksgiving

By G. E. Shuman


There is a small wooden plaque on the wall in our kitchen.  The plaque was given to us several years ago, by our daughter, Cathy.  It simply reads: “We Are Rich With Priceless Grandchildren.”
As I remember, Cathy gave us that plaque at a time when my wife and I really needed such a reminder of our great wealth.  The position I held with my employer at the time had recently been eliminated, meaning that ‘I’ had recently been eliminated, and things were in a state of slight upheaval at our home.   I was on unemployment, for the first time in my life.  I was out of work, for the very first time since before my eighteenth birthday.  Until that terrible day of first unemployment, I had received a full-time paycheck, every single week, since President Nixon was in office.  I was quite proud of that record, which had just been tarnished by what I will always consider to be a very unscrupulous and unfair former employer.
The reminder of our wealth, painted on that slight stick of a sign, was much more, to my wife and me, than some sappy platitude or sentimental prose.  It was, and still is, a fact.  True wealth cannot be measured by something as fleeting and fluctuating as dollars.  After all, “you can’t take it with you,” we are told.  To my family, true wealth, and I mean REAL and true wealth, is weighed, measured and counted in the one valuable asset that we can take with us, and that asset IS us.  Heaven holds no dollars, but all of my kids and grandkids are saved, and already have homes there.
I was in the kitchen earlier today, glancing at that plaque, as it rests atop a collage of pictures of our grandkids.  We will all be together, this year, at Cathy’s home, on Thanksgiving Day.   I am looking forward to an afternoon of food and fun with my wonderful family.  Soon after dinner I will be pulled by my thumbs to a recliner, and will read many stories to the tiniest two or three of my family treasures.  I will thank God for them, and for the truth of that plaque at home on our kitchen wall.
I hope you have a rich Thanksgiving, too.

Reproduction

By G.E. Shuman

First of all, regarding the title… what I mean is that this column is about reproduction, not that this column is about reproduction by G.E. Shuman. It all depends on emphasis, and if you read the title and my name with or without a pause after ‘reproduction.’ Frankly, I think it’s always good to pause after reproduction. Actually, truthfully, the column isn’t even about that subject at all, as it might commonly be discussed. It is more about the ability to reproduce… Oh, just read on, and you’ll understand.

My daughter Cathy’s family’s dog, Nellie, had eight puppies recently, and we went to their home in New Hampshire to visit them, (not the puppies so much as the family.) To me, and to others, it was just amazing that these tiny puppies actually knew when their mother entered the room they were in, and called to her, to get her attention. In fact, they would nearly whine their heads off whenever she was present. This action was pretty universal to them all. It was not done with radar, or magic, but probably by scent, and possibly by sound. Those little guys (and gals) simply knew when their big, warm, caring food supply was near. They knew all of this from instinct, which they happen to come equipped with. They needed to find Mom and the food dispensers, which she also happened to come equipped with. How convenient.

As I sat there watching these pups scramble for their mom, and her seemingly ’loving’ attention to them, the whole thing just seemed so planned and perfect. It then dawned on me that the reason for that was that it WAS planned and perfect. This lowly animal not only had the equipment necessary to reproduce herself in these tiny offspring, but also the desire and ability to provide for their greatest needs; a source of nourishment, and a warm and safe place for them to rest and grow. It seemed to me that someone just had to have figured this all out, before even the second generation of dog-life ever existed on the earth. Otherwise, that generation would never have existed at all.

If you have read much of my ‘stuff’ here in the paper, you know that I believe the Bible. I make no apology for that, in fact, I feel that I would need to apologize if I didn’t believe the Bible. In this belief, I also believe in creation, not by an intelligent creator, but by an EXTREMELY intelligent creator. I believe that, in a literal six day period, God created everything that exists, out of nothing. Yup, nothing. To me this belief takes much less faith than to believe that there was a big bang and that that’s how everything came from nothing. I have always wondered what it was that went bang, in the big bang, if we are really talking about the very beginning. Some folks would say that the stuff of the bang came from a previous universe, and I would argue that there really must have been a ‘first’ universe that needed to get its ‘stuff’ from somewhere. But, that’s another column.

(Caution, this next paragraph is x-rated, sort of. In saying that, at least I know you will read it)

Then there is the subject of the desire for reproduction. My thought is that God loves life, His creation, and wants it to continue. The fact that the act of mixing genes to form another life seems to be an enjoyable activity to humans and probably to animals just confirms that. I think that if it hurt, we self-centered humans would have been out of business eons ago. 
I sometimes think, in amazement, of the intricacies of not only the
human body, but of animal bodies, even down to those of creatures like
mice, which we consider vermin. The females of even those creatures nurse
their young, which are BORN with every egg they will ever have, to
reproduce the next generation. That seems like a plan, to me.
The truth is, I have never wondered which came first, the chicken or the egg. I believe that the chicken came first, complete with the ability to produce the egg. After all, the egg had to come from somewhere, and we know where they come from. Don’t we? They come from a chicken-sized egg factory. That also seems like a plan, to me.

Mankind is quite good at producing machines. I would love to have someone come up with just one machine capable of not only functioning in countless, useful and deliberate ways, including caring for itself and repairing, (healing) itself, but also of reproducing an exact, operating and maturing copy of itself, and then nurturing that copy until it is able to function totally independently, and, in turn, generate another one just like itself and the original, ‘grandma‘ machine. That would be a great trick, even for the most brilliant inventor. My heart-felt conviction is that it was no trick at all for the GREATEST inventor. His inventions, including both lowly mice, and us, can reproduce themselves quite well. So can Nellie, my daughter’s dog.