The feminists of the ‘70s talked about moments of epiphany that they – we, actually – called the “click.” They were moments when we realized that reality did not match the feminine ideal, supposedly. But in practice it meant the increasingly frequent realization that we were in the presence of a male chauvinist pig or one of his drones.
Well, I’ll tell you – a feminist “click” is nothing compared to the epiphanies that become practically a daily occurrence for a new Christian intent on learning about her Lord just as quickly as possible.
Many of my clicks have come from a piece of scientific, historical or cultural information. For instance, one day not long ago I was lunching at a Chinese restaurant with some friends. We each had a “Chinese New Year” placemat, and while everyone else was busy looking for their birth years and those of their mates, I amused myself by looking at the animals chosen for the Chinese zodiac:
Dragon
Rat
Ox
Tiger
Rabbit/cat
Goat
Monkey
Rooster
Dog
Pig
Snake
Horse
I looked again at the first animal: Dragon.
My stomach flip-flopped, just as it had when Paul Newman and Julie Andrews had seen the second bus following them in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain.
How is it, I wondered, that the ancient Chinese had chosen 11 real animals, and one mythological critter?
I remembered hearing, too, that all major cultures have dragon myths (not to mention “great flood” myths), and that ancient dragon images have been found all over the world, from Babylon and Egypt to China; they’ve been found drawn on Viking ships, shown in relief sculpture in Aztec temples, and carved into bones by Intuits. And when I thought about all the dragon drawings I’d seen over the course of five decades, they all blurred into just a few types of creatures.
But of course, scientists have managed to explain these similarities away. Because of course the alternative is unthinkable: We couldn’t possibly admit the possibility that these dragons had actually lived with man, that they were in fact dinosaurs (a word that wasn’t invented until the 19th century), that – horrors! – maybe “millions and millions of years ago” was nothing more than the opening words of today’s adult fairy tales.
Click.
______________
Excerpted from Heaven Without Her, pp 122-124
Well, I’ll tell you – a feminist “click” is nothing compared to the epiphanies that become practically a daily occurrence for a new Christian intent on learning about her Lord just as quickly as possible.
Many of my clicks have come from a piece of scientific, historical or cultural information. For instance, one day not long ago I was lunching at a Chinese restaurant with some friends. We each had a “Chinese New Year” placemat, and while everyone else was busy looking for their birth years and those of their mates, I amused myself by looking at the animals chosen for the Chinese zodiac:
Dragon
Rat
Ox
Tiger
Rabbit/cat
Goat
Monkey
Rooster
Dog
Pig
Snake
Horse
I looked again at the first animal: Dragon.
My stomach flip-flopped, just as it had when Paul Newman and Julie Andrews had seen the second bus following them in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain.
How is it, I wondered, that the ancient Chinese had chosen 11 real animals, and one mythological critter?
I remembered hearing, too, that all major cultures have dragon myths (not to mention “great flood” myths), and that ancient dragon images have been found all over the world, from Babylon and Egypt to China; they’ve been found drawn on Viking ships, shown in relief sculpture in Aztec temples, and carved into bones by Intuits. And when I thought about all the dragon drawings I’d seen over the course of five decades, they all blurred into just a few types of creatures.
But of course, scientists have managed to explain these similarities away. Because of course the alternative is unthinkable: We couldn’t possibly admit the possibility that these dragons had actually lived with man, that they were in fact dinosaurs (a word that wasn’t invented until the 19th century), that – horrors! – maybe “millions and millions of years ago” was nothing more than the opening words of today’s adult fairy tales.
Click.
______________
Excerpted from Heaven Without Her, pp 122-124
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