Genetic wonderings

Sunday, Jan. 3rd, 2010.

First Sunday at church. The beginning of a new year.

On the way there, I listened to a radio show discussing the reasoning behind our behaviors. Scientists have decided that when we are little we are subject and molded by our environment. As we grow to adulthood, we become addicted because of our jeans.(I know)

Personally, I don't like jeans. My butt's too big and jeans squeeze all my fat compressing the innards into a ball. I'm too vain to buy the size I probably need, if they make them that large. Spandex isn't very flattering so vanity is opting out for cover ups. Big, black, billowing, cover-ups that flow gently with the wind.

Back to genetics. Could this be true? Are we subject to genes that dominate our looks, desires, or actions? We possess created bodies from mortal pros and cons twisted and glued by genes, blood lines, and fat cells, do we not?

Do we dare contemplate the idea that all this could become immortal? Oh, my. Let's hope immortality has perfection made from angel dust covered with sun kissed, microscopic measures so far beyond our imagination that dreams cannot be envisioned. It would be beautiful. Like the delicate, golden trusses of a young girl's hair or the sweet flavor of juicy fruit gum with or without your first kiss. I digress.

Have we been created with such imperfections as to remind us that mortality is subtropical? We break through our boundaries of warmth and water to breathe our first breath only to then turn around and learn to snorkel our way back underground and love it.

Since I love warm and cool, subtropical to me is a sweat box with critters and smelly bodies maintaining a level of life way above/below my comfort level. I'm thinking of the Bahama's without a palm tree to hide under or the Amazon with fish willing to fillet your phalanges. Have you seen a palm tree shed its branches? It looks worse than a snake depositing its old for a new skin. Have you seen your skeleton with or without the zit? Just not a sight to savor.

Hence, we mortals come in all forms, styles, and oddities on purpose. It's spectrum genetics in all tropics.

Should scientists be correct, I'll give them their right to position. However, their position contains no hope of change, improvement, or justification. They leave us saturated with only facts. Perhaps my fat is controlled by a gene. Am I doomed to forever bend my elbow to fuel my face? Some days I think so. Hope says not so.

I feel for the child born to a drug addict. A child destined to live and have to wallow in filth. Where does his change ly? Environment does play its part.

Genetics can be set in stone. A child born without a brain stem does not have long to survive. Disease laced bodies so small that the environment has yet to take hold. Reality can be sad. Then we have the other side. The genetic jackpots. The one's with everything including looks, health, wealth, and position. Life can stink.

Do genetics program the heart and soul of a person? Is one genetically disposed to caring, giving, loving, laughing? Does optimism and pessimism come from genetics, environment or both? Perhaps neither?

Life is not balanced. Some have it all, while others live and die with naught.

Be it genetic or not, life requires that we put it all together and find meaning in the pot. I've heard it called the melting pot.

How do we blend with those around us? Perhaps we share those jeans. Heaven knows I'd love to have a 36" butt. That's why we endorse DI Industries and Goodwill Stores to blend the haves and have-not's wealth. Would we have tried the blend if we all were the same?

I suspect genetics have established a definite impact on our lives. Like interlocking puzzle pieces, it is what makes us different, odd, yet connective. Do we take these genes with us? I don't know. I hope not. They are, however, what keep us mortal. A step above the animals. Add our spirits to these genetic bodies and we have a soul. We experience the unique difference of having a choice over just eating, breathing, and breeding.

Which brings me to the question, do genetics play a roll in our spirits? Hum.. No!. I want to believe that spirits have an eternal make up unaltered by genetic mortality. A spirit that encompasses a higher law of values. An eternal perspective that surpasses the mortal realm. An inner sense that when spoken to us and should we listen, can redirect the genetic disposition that disposes our mortal nature.

And if all else fails, find hope and joy in a justice that will cover a multitude of losses and shortcomings brought on through mortal genetic failures. Scientists have long faltered in comprehending the full reasoning for the genetic makeup of mortality.

For the moment, we coexist as part mortal and part spiritual in the hope that genetics will die and eternal laws will resolve all genetic failures to come.

While I wait, I still wish to be a genetic 36, 24, 36 ...