nonsense

 

A friend's blog about twin concerns or interests leaves me agreeing and disagreeing and remembering and contemplating and thinking and needing to pause my Lenten reading and loose the jumping fingers to their meandering +Time nonsense. Extended, his blogpost also moved me to check my favorite osprey nest, at Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont, Colorado. How I became aware of and interested in an osprey nest far away in the Colorado Rockies is neither your conceon nor a topic of +Time. 

All kinds of things came together to stir and focus this line of thought - - first his blogpost, then sitting here with Linda as she pointed excitedly to an osprey flying almost reach-out-and-touch-him close to our window here in 7H, clutching a fish and waggling his tail in obvious excitement: how are my osprey nest in Colorado doing, I better check!

The nest is empty. Historically the female seems to arrive first, last week of March, so, soon but not yet. In continual occupancy for more than twenty years, with, I think, an ongoing male bird and change of female birds quite a few years ago. The female stayed on and a couple years ago the resident male failed to show, meaning he was dead because that's both the way of life and the answer to the existential question, and a replacement male showed up and the female accepted him. I mean, the idea is to be fruitful and multiply, and a male is a male and a female is a female, nomesane? 

We haven't had any fledgling chicks for three or four years now. The final year with the old male, my recollection, there was an early blizzard that killed the eggs; then a couple years ago the new eggs didn't hatch at all and the caretakers decided the nest might be contaminated and should be taken down - - which they did from high on a cherrypicker one day as we watched, and then when the ospreys arrived they rebuilt the nest stick by stick from scratch as we watched, but no eggs hatched. It's how life is. I'm getting my years and seasons mixed up, but no matter. 

Anyway, last year, with the new male's second season, no eggs hatched. I couldn't tell that it bothered the ospreys, they just hung around until Time to migrate again, but it's been a bit tearing for us who keep ever hopeful and sometimes anxious watch on the nest. Maybe this year! 

With the cycle of life, there's always "next year in Jerusalem!" nicht wahr?

Which brings me round to my thoughts for today, ignited by my friend's blogpost.

Yes, he's dressed in Hippie attire of fifty years ago (the sailors on my last ship were hilarious with the bell-bottom suits they had tailor-made while the ship was in Hong Kong), but most will realize the image is Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill in his eternal damnation (for outwitting the Gods), to push it to the top, where it rolls back to the bottom and he has to push it up again, again and again for all eternity. I'm not sure it could be any more boring than eternally standing around the Throne singing praise songs to the Father and the Lamb that was Slain, but whatever one is led to believe. For me it would depend on whether we sing Anglican Chant or modern praise songs. At any event, the point of all this is that - - well, it points at least a couple of ways - - 

ONE is that unending repetition is the way of life for most working adults anyway. It doesn't matter what the work is. In Ford's River Rouge engine plant the summer of 1962, I watched a union worker standing in a pit, reaching into a tray of bolts, picking up two bolts, looking up, raising his arms and turning two bolts into the bottom of every V8 engine that, hanging from a chain, moved over his head. It's a job, eh, work is work. Go to bed, wake up, go to work, come home, drink a six-pack, go to bed, wake up, ... so what Sisyphus has to do is just more of life as it is. Mostly work, but in the image, Sisyphus seems to have made himself content, even happy and enjoying it; he does get to pause, rest for a moment, and enjoy watching his assigned boulder roll back down. Reaching the top, he can take pride in his accomplishment, and as it turns out, he's beat the punishing gods at their own game because he's smiling instead of whining. Maybe he distracts himself humming Ronnie Milsaps' song "Daydreams About Night Things". Maybe he stops and smells the flowers on the way back down. And he gets to live forever, eh? It's just life in Time and Eternity: first, the here & now; later, the hereafter forever. Or, later, oblivion without Time, depending on one's religious faith, 

of which there are hundreds, all valid to Insiders, take your choice - - even among Christianity - - Roman Catholics going to Mass, Episcopalians repeating the liturgy, Methodists seeking a spiritual experience, Baptists hearing a sermon against whiskey, beer and wine, Charismatics with hands in the air, Quakers in their silence, it's all good.

TWO, the philosopher's question, the existential question, "What's it all about, Why am I here, Why are WE here, What's the purpose, What's the meaning of life?" is a ridiculous issue of human construct that disturbs neither God nor other animals. 

So far as we know, we're the only animals that ponder such a self-evident absurdity. Watching the osprey nest totally answers the question: we are here to be fruitful and multiply, to perpetuate the species. Two birds live fruitfully and multiply, one bird dies, a replacement bird arrives, two birds live fruitfully and multiply, the other bird dies, a replacement bird arrives, two birds live ... 

The fact that, of all the animals, humans have evolved - - well, we have a great story about that - - evolved to be aware and self-aware in ways that other animals are not; depending on one's faith, created to be fruitful and multiply, all the Time evolving toward, being more and more like Whoever or Whatever said yeh-HI, BE!! . 

Created us for what? Genesis 1:28, created us as a species, Adam Earthling, to be fruitful and multiply, and to have dominion. That's the simple answer to what philosophers have, ever since first gazing up at the stars, made their living by posing their supposedly sophisticated existential question, "Why?" Because Someone or Something said yehHI and we are what transpired.

So, and in conclusion, some live to push a boulder up a hill over and over again. Some live to ask self-evident questions that, to answer, you can watch a bee hive, or you can watch an ant nest, or you can watch salmon spawn and die, or you can watch the human life cycle including your own, or you can watch an osprey nest for a decade or two. 

RSF&PTL

T