[gardener]

In several religious traditions, there are doctrines of “ensoulment,” appearing in various forms. Basically these hold that human persons, in essence, are not the product of elements contributed by their parents. Instead, our inmost and truest being is a pre-existent and immortal soul, divine in origin, that is placed in us at some point in our inter-uterine stage of development (conception maybe, or quickening, possibly) .

I don’t hold to this view. If I ask who I am and how I got to be that way, I’ll say that environment plays a major role. So does my experience. So do the habits I have formed. (I could write volumes on these points but won’t. I want to fry other fish entirely.)

One of my basic ideas about life is that I’m here, it’s great to be here, but I’m not inevitable. The universe could get along perfectly well without “Gardener.”

There are things about me that don’t come from environment or experience. I have white skin (well, pink, actually, but well-tanned from being outdoors as much as possible from late March through Halloween). My eyes are hazel. I can’t curl my tongue or whistle worth a damn. My second toes are longer than my big toes. I am left-handed. Mosquitoes find me irresistible. And, oh yes, I am a male. These are all inherited characteristics. They happened when one particular spermatozoon, donated by my father, plunged into one particular ovum lodged briefly deep inside my mother. And behold, there was me, left-handed and all the rest.

I might not have been. In fact, despite my incorrect notion at times that I am the very center of the known universe, I came into being against enormous odds. Today, for some reason or other, the average male ejaculation of semen contains a mere 20 million spermatozoa. Back in the 1930s, it was 100 million. In my case, there was one winner and 99,999,999 losers. (The actual odds were even greater, inasmuch as my parents finally disclosed to me that like a lot of other babies of the depression years I was “an accident.”)

The mathematics of personal existence are astounding, if you think about them—and if you believe, as I do, that the science of genetics is truer to the way things are than systems of theological dogma and doctrine. For any of us to be, all of our ancestors must be in the right place at the right time with the right partners—and with one lucky spermatozoon out of hordes of unlucky contenders.

Some may disagree, but I find this view inspiring. I love my sons passionately, mostly for who they are, the kinds of men they have become, but also because their existence is close to miraculous, against all the odds. And my four granddaughters and one grandson—hey, they may enrich the entire world with their contributions to human happiness and harmony with nature.

When I am at my most sane, I think of every human being in these terms, as almost a miracle.

I don’t think people who hold this view are capable of getting in an airplane and hijacking it and killing themselves and almost 3000 others for the greater glory of a divine being. Or launching a war on what seems to be Oedipal whim.

There are some problems with my position. I am strongly “pro-choice” (to use the euphemism), up to the end of the first trimester, and fairly strongly up to the end of the second. It’s a little hard to reconcile this with the notion that every one of us is a walking miracle. (Also, there are a few people here and there about whom I think their parents should have been better at birth control.)

BTW, this is a post I have doubts about. This is about the 30th draft. I may not have gotten it right.