Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Friday, May 09, 2008

Joe Orso: What sort of questions does Creation ask of you?

By Joe Orso / La Crosse Tribune

How do you explain Creation? Is it fact or fiction? Do you reject the story as told in Genesis because it sounds absurd to say that some disembodied being made light, water, vegetation and humanity out of nothing? Or do you accept it as historical fact, as an intellectual matter for science class?

Do you measure Creation with a scientific ruler?

And how do you explain your own creation?

Are you merely the product of a sexual act, now strangely alive in a universe of matter? Or as you sit, reading this column, do you feel something like life in your body and consider that you, too, are Creation?

And how does flesh speak?

And when you look out of your eyes, what do you see? Do you see a table, a bed and a chair, or perhaps grass and a rock? Or a bottle of gin? Maybe a caterpillar? Is that all?

Do you see stories, too?

Do you see Revelation when the butterfly emerges from the cocoon? Or when you come upon a man lying in a parking lot at night because his knees have pins in them, it is cold and he is drunk, do you see something being revealed to you?

And how do you respond to a member of the Zuni American Indian tribe, who — as retold in the introduction to “A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul” — once asked of an anthropologist writing down a story, “When I tell you these stories, do you see it, or do you just write it down?”

Joe Orso can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8429.