Tag Archives: Elections

He’s a terror that one-

Turns water into wine,

Turns wine into blood-

What on earth does he turn blood into?

Christopher Derrick, New Oxford Review, October 1981

Q: Now sir, have you now or ever been a member of the creationist party?

A: Excuse me?

Q: Its a question anyone running for higher office should expect. Do you believe in evolution?

A: I don’t understand the relevance.

Q: The public is being asked to choose between two men. Your opponent may be a bit of a rabble rouser, but he is always good for a line.  The public wants transparency, not an enigma.

A: If you insist.  I do believe in evolution.

Q: Doesn’t it conflict with your beliefs?

A: Not at all, my Lord is the High Priest of Evolution.

Q: Uh … what?

A:  Man in his finitude, has always sought to limit God’s Alpha and Omega. In trying to cheat what we thought was the Omega of death, we instead lost the Alpha of divine grace. One poisoned apple instead of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb.

Q: I am not sure where this answer is going… but apple growers are a powerful constituency in this state. Sheep farmers, not so much.

A: God bless you.  This pattern of setting limits has continued through the ages. In the historic era, Bishop Ussher set the Alpha at around 4000 BC. More recent wise men set the Omega at the end of the second millennium.

Q: I am not asking about religious history, I’m asking about the evolution of human beings from apes. Did you ever hear of the missing link? The Scopes Monkey Trial?

A: The life of Jesus, the Second Adam, included the entire scope of God’s plan for our evolution: conception, birth, childhood, maturity, the chrysalis of death, and the Resurrection. He is both the true measure of man and the missing link in humanity’s salvation history.

Q: True measure? Do you think you know what is true? Can you find your way to the 21st century with your response?

A: In man’s contemporary logic of evolution, he once again tries to seize the reigns. The Alpha never quite begins, banished first to the primordial past of this planet. Then to stew of amino acids among the comets. Even further to the Big Bang, and perhaps a prior universe as part of a never-ending cycle of collapsing and expanding universes.

The Omega never quite arrives either, as we endlessly change as technology permits in pursuit of a post-human ideal.  We might even hop from planet to planet until, like the Ouroboros, the tail of the Omega swallows the head of the Alpha in the collapse and expansion of a new universe.

Q: Your a what? If I heard you correctly, you seem to concede that evolution is ongoing. That’s rather progressive for someone like you.

A: My Lord, the one true progressive, said that at the appointed time, in the twinkling of an eye, we will all be changed. Its the final, eternal evolution. I and those like me seek this eternal, but not the eternal return.

Q: Speaking of returns, they will soon be arriving. Few think you will win.

A: Let me share a secret with you, its all that matters. Lean close.

Q: Indeed! A peck on the cheek may be ok where you come from, but not in this day and age…

Q: Well, this interview appears to be over, as the candidate has left the studio. Some say he never should have run. While he has many admirable qualities, the conventional wisdom is that his refusal to play the game of politics will ultimately doom his candidacy. Its almost as if he doesn’t care if he wins.  Stay up with me all night as we watch the returns …..