Giver of Life

A long time ago when I was a PFC in the S-1 section of an Air Assault Battalion HQ I was talking with a Sergeant from the S-4 section. I was trying to convince him of the truth of truth, that there really is someting that exists wheather or not anyone believes it exits. Sometime during the conversation he said "What would you do if a UFO landed and aliens popped out? That would completely invalidate all your Christian shit." I attempted to answer him by saying that his argument was a retreat from reality and a leap into a potentially endless chain of "what ifs". But he kept saying, "What would you do? See! See! It totally kills your argument. I'm not going to beleive the Bible until you answer the UFO question."

I was totally at a loss. I had never encountered such a strange argument before. Anyway, that conversation has never left me, and I have thought about it often over the last 15 years.

Last night while driving up to San Francisco for the Pentecost Vigil we were listening to a science radio show called Life On Earth on KQED-FM. Now I have to explain that since Pascha 50 days ago we have not been saying a particular prayer. It is the prayer that Orthodox normally say at least three times a day, except for the 50 days leading up to Pentecost.

The prayer is:

O, Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth who art everywhere preasent and fillest all things, Treasury of good gifts and Giver of life, come and abide in us, and save our souls, O Good One.

It is a prayer to the Holy Spirit and for the fifty days leading up to Pascaha we remeber that the disciples waited for the Holy Spirit. So, we do not pray this prayer. But our hearts ache to pray it. We, if we love Jesus, want to be filled with his Spirit. And this prayer finally gave me the answer to that supply sergeant's question. How? By listening to the radio and traveling to Church where I would finally after 50 days sing that prayer to the Holy Ghost. You can read the whole text or download a recording of the interview here, but below is the part that jumped out to me:

"And to his great surprise they have, and he's found at least one microbe that not only thrives in the spacecraft assembly facility, but seems to have actually evolved in it. It's a tough little spore, it eats aluminum. He found it growing on the surface of one of the Mars Rovers. It forms these spores and then the spores kind of group together to form a little, what he calls an igloo. It looks kind of like a macaroon under a microscope and when he cuts it open and exposes it to the light detection techniques that NASA's developed to look for life, he finds no sign of life and then when he puts this little igloo back together, the microbe comes back to life amazingly. And I asked him, "So you know you found this thing on the Mars Rover when it was being built. Do you think it's up there on Mars right now?" And he said, "oh yes, I'm quite certain, I'm almost certain that it is." So you know, I mean, it's just indicative of how life wants to spread."

So, I had this prayer to the Holy Ghost in my mind (Actually, I was trying really hard not to think the words until I got to church.) and I was listening to this interview about life. And then it hit me... If we Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is the "giver of life" and if we believe He is "everywhere present" we should not doubt that evey measureable part of the Universe is filled with life and if we do not see it is only because we do not have the tools to see it.

If I could go back in time I would say this to that sergeant: "We expect to find life in outer space because God loves life, and there is no place where He is not. Therefore, we would see the arrival of little green men as a validation of what we believe about the nature of God."

Oh, about Pentecost: Bishop Tikhon was here. Fabulous services on Saturday and today. But next year I'm going to make a point to talk to someone about getting the oriental rugs back down on the floor before we do the Kneeling Vespers. (We roll them up and put them away for Holy Week and Pascha to prevent damage from hundreds of dripping candles.) Oh, we did the procession. You can see me in this picture. I'm the man holding the Icon of the Holy Trinity.