Momento mori

"Momento mori" -- Remember, you (too) will die.




When I was in high school, I got from somewhere a poster reproduction of Albrecht Durer's engraving, St. Jerome in His Study. Even now, I'm not sure why I liked it so well, but nevertheless I kept it directly above my desk. (You can see the whole thing, in Wikipedia's Commons .) The engraving contains numerous conventional symbols, a few of which I recognized even then. But, I didn't recognize the 'momento mori' -- a skull sitting on the shelf under the window.

And at 18, who does?

Like most 18 year olds, I assumed that nothing would happen to me. At 18, there's time for everything, and it's still possible to assume you'll get it all done. I'd read St. Mathew's record of Christ's warning, that we should not "be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body". But, I was 18, and all that seemed remote.

In retrospect, I realize it was never as remote as it seemed. I was near death far more times in my late teens and early twenties than I've been in all the years since. There were at least half a dozen occasions, when I was a hair's breadth away from a fatal accident, but I didn't slip; the surface of the water was close enough, barely; the idiotic leap succeeded. And, that's not including general recklessness, like driving too fast.

I yet live, in spite of all those things.

I think many young people -- at least those with some sort of intact family -- tend to unconsciously assume the presence of a family 'home', some place they could go back to, if it came to that. It's not necessarily anything very substantial, but it's there, even though you may notice it most when you are losing it.

But, it's that sense that gives us a "here" when we say we live "here" or are from "here". It is these things that root us in 'this' life, "here", and give the young a place 'be' in their presumed immortality.

For me, that place was most particularly 16 Castle Avenue, my mother's parent's home. Soon after I moved out of 16 Castle, in order to marry Susan, the decision was soon that it wasn't practical for Grandmother to continue to live there alone. So, Aunt Austin took her in, and 16 Castle Avenue was sold.

That was something I found hard. Ever since then, at least for me, just being near 16 Castle is enough to trigger a sense of loss. 16 Castle was the nexus of the Averett clan, almost as much as Grandmother herself. And without it, there was no longer a 'home' for the Averetts, at least not in the way there had been.

In a general sort of way, age tends to expose those illusions. However, I think that it is funerals that expose those illusions in the most pointed and individual way possible. When my grandfather died in 1979, my world was emptied of heroes. When my mother died last year, fractures in my own immediate family became permanent. And, with the death of Susan's father a year ago this spring, the 'umbrella' of parents and grandparents behind us vanished.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that Abraham "lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise;for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." We are all called to do the same.

But, I think it can be kind of hard to do so, when you are young, and your life is still fully rooted in places and parents and grandparents. I wonder what sort of momento mori I ought to place on my son's desks?

God's Nature in Nature

When I started this blog some years ago, Susan and I just wanted to use it to chronicle our experiences in nature. We like walking and hiking and camping, and we think some of what we see and do is interesting. But the purpose was not sufficient to the effort. So, there have been just four posts in three years.

I have a clearer focus and purpose now so I need to restart. Hopefully, just what that focus is will become clearer over time.


I'd like to begin with an observation: it appears that the Bible indicates that perhaps the primary method God uses to convince of us, or remind us, of His reality and power are reflections of, and on, His work in nature. Granted, miracles sometimes accomplish the same thing, more immediately and dramatically. But that's the 'exception, not the rule': most people don't encounter miracles.

Paul tells us (Rom. 1:20) that "since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse".

Those are pretty strong claims, and pretty stunning, at least for someone like me, used to all sorts of philosophical and logical arguments about God and His nature.

If I can paraphrase, Paul says that, for as long as men have been around, they've been able to clearly understand, not only that God really is, but also what He is really like, from all the stuff  He's made and done in nature, and that it's been made so clear to them, that any argument that they didn't know is just an empty excuse. (Paul goes on to explain that, given that they could have known, and should have known, the only reason that they didn't know is that they didn't want to know, and engaged into some pretty severe lying to themselves.)

Now, I have to say that, even as much as I like the outdoors and 'nature', and as much time and study I've given to natural history, it's not entirely clear to me just what can be known of God from nature. Paul's phrase,  "invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature", covers a lot of ground, but not a lot of specific details.

Still, I think it's clear that without knowing nature itself, it's not possible to see what can be "clearly seen" from nature.


When Paul wrote that it was still true, even in cities, that people lived 'in nature' in a way Americans do not. When Paul wrote, any child who'd stepped outside on a clear night had seen the Milky Way. But I myself did not share that experience till I was an adult. Because of our technology (and lights!), it's now necessary to drive miles away from the nearest city, in order to see the same thing.

I have to wonder -- is it possible for Christians and their children today to see what can be "clearly seen"?
Most Christians I know of primarily experience nature as something to be sprayed, or stepped on, or avoided.

One of my son's friends is phobic about snakes. Maybe that's not so bad. There is that strange story from Genesis of the Tempter as a serpent, and there are some studies that suggest a phobia about snakes may have a genetic component.

But, another friend is terrified of butterflies. Butterflies?? At first, I thought I'd heard wrong, but I hadn't.

For some today, there are reasons to be afraid of a talk about the "birds and the bees" that have nothing to do with their parents going all 'TMI' on them: they are afraid of birds and bees themselves.

Such people are cut off from the beauty and wonder of a jumping spider who distinguishes faces from feet using a brain the size of a pinhead; from the wood ducks who manage to see you long before you see them, no matter how stealthy you are, and who flee whistling their alarm call; from the wood ants who each summer build highways, complete with bridges and underpasses, hundreds of yards long; from trapdoor spiders, who were building security vault type doors long before bank managers thought of using them; and from the complexity of elaborate lichens, who are neither plant nor animal, but diverse colonies of both plants and fungi. All these things, and many more, are both common in the area where I live, and unknown to most people.

Can people who've never seen the Milky Way, who don't recognize the rising of the sun . . . and the moon (at the rate of 15 degrees per hour!), who've never heard the screams of hawks in the spring, and looked up to marvel at them circling in pairs each spring, who don't look for cowslips and spring beauties in the spring, because they don't know what they are, much less that they mark the coming of summer . . . can such people see what can be "clearly seen" from nature?

I'm not sure, but my guess is that they have been blinded, and cannot see. But surely such a thing would not be God's work, would it?

When we teach our children that nature is something to avoid and flee from, are we not teaching them to blind themselves to one of the ways that God speaks to men? And, when we accept teaching from their schools that "nature" is something in "The Brazilian Rain Forest", or the zoo, or on BBC-TV, rather than something mere feet away from them, are we not blinding them to what God would have them see?

I'm not sure, but my guess is that this blinding of our children is a work against God, and not from His Hand at all.

This is Uh-Oh. The name comes from one of the 'close' calls pileated woodpeckers make, when they are around 'family'.

Madison and Cameron found him, a flightless nestling in pin feathers, after the dead pine his parents had nested in was toppled by a spring storm two years ago. His nest mate was killed by the fall, and he was starving when they found him. His parents were still around, but not feeding him, so Madison took him. Doing so was illegal, but we figured he was sure to die shortly if he did not, and indeed, his nest mate was eaten by a raccoon (or skunk or possum) sometime during the following 24 hours.

We've raised birds before and successfully hacked and released them, but we weren't sure about a wood pecker, especially one as large as Uh-oh. (Pileated woodpeckers -- Dryocopus pileatus -- grow to crow-size!) As it turned out, they are difficult to rear and hack. They don't like cages very much, and as they get older, they destroy wooden ones with some regularity. With steel cages, the injury is to the bird, not the cage, but it's still a problem for the rehabilitator. As a result, we couldn't find any licensed rehab center to take him.

So, we tried to raise him, hoping not to get caught, and fully expecting him to die. Instead, he decided to thrive.

He lived in with Madison and Cameron in their bedroom for almost three months. The first month, he spent mostly in a cage. But as he grew, he began flying . . . and pecking. And what had been difficult before, became very difficult. Adult pileated woodpeckers topple wooden telephone poles by pecking holes in them. Uh-oh didn't go that far, but he did demolish several large oak limbs we kept in their bedroom for him to roost on. If we completely covered his cage with towels, blacking it out, we could keep him in a cage at night, or for a few hours at time during the day. Otherwise, he had to be allowed to roam free, which he did.

It was a mess. We still occasionally find some of his 'leavings' behind things when we move them.

But, it was also amazing.

Woodpeckers live among trees with dense branches and leaves. We'd never thought about it, but they need pretty amazing maneuvering skills to function in that environment. Other birds we've raised struggle to manage flight in the tight confines of our small house. Uh-Oh did not. Even though he was larger -- eventually, much larger -- he could fly at high speed over your shoulder, reverse direction in just a couple of feet, land on your back, and then peek out at whoever else might be about from round your arm or neck.

The engineering training I had at UTC taught me in many things. But of all the things I learned, one that I value most is the ability it gave me to see just how amazing God's engineering is. From an engineer's perspective, Uh-oh was simply incredible. From the stunningly effective shock absorber system that protected his brain from blows that would have concussed or killed most other birds and mammals (try using YOUR head as a hammer!); to his prehensile foot long tongue, complete with a sharpened and barbed tip; to the Velcro like climbing feathers in his tail that were an integral part of his tree climbing 'kit' . . . he was a marvel for those with eyes to see and the training to understand.

Raising him affected us all.

But it may have affected Cameron most. I'm not sure it's even possible any more for him to believe in a random universe, in which Uh-oh was just an odd and improbable accident. Knowing Uh-oh and understanding something of how he was made rendered that idea absurd.

Is that something God intended? I suspect that it is. I suspect that God intends for creation to teach us -- even as it groans under the curse -- about His power, His ideas of beauty and splendor, and His skill in creating good things.

But, if this is so, what duties do we who are parents have to our children? If they learn from us to recoil, rather than marvel, who are we serving?

I think that I know the answer to that question. And I think that much of what our children learn from us about nature is not a lesson from God.