Not everyone loves their relatives.
Creationists, for example, go bananas should you even hint that we might be descended from monkeys. However, when I read a story in The New York Times about a monkey called Idoya, I went ape. I was thrilled to consider myself a distant cousin to monkeys. In my book, Idoya was doing the Lord’s work. She was making the lame to walk.
This miracle occurred simultaneously at Duke University and in Kyoto, Japan.
At Duke, scientists implanted electrodes in Idoya’s brain. She was placed on a treadmill with a computer screen in front of her. The scientists recorded her brain activity. Two hundred and fifty to three hundred neurons fired as Idoya walked the treadmill. The data was fed into a computer and transmitted over a high speed Internet link to a robot named CB in Kyoto, Japan. Sure enough, as Idoya’s brain signals streamed into CB’s actuators, CB walked at exactly the same pace. Even after Idoya stopped moving she kept CB walking for three minutes by simply watching CB on the screen. From the depths of her mind (I like to think her heart, too), Idoya thought CB to life, well perhaps not life exactly, but at least she got CB up and moving. That’s no small feat. The scientists rewarded Idoya for her efforts with lots of Cheerios and raisins. In my opinion, that was chump change considering the magnitude of her accomplishment.
In the beginning God had lots of ideas. At first there was no one to talk to about them. So he actualized his ideas by first putting them into words. According to Genesis, God said, “Let there be light.” And in one big bang, light was everywhere. We, too, another idea in God’s mind, came into being when he said “Let us make man in our own image.” Adding a deep breath, God entered men and women into the creation story.
Creativity, any kind, works that way pretty much across the board. First the inspiration, then the incubation, and finally the illumination appears and you get to it. Writers do it in words, artists in pictures, sculptors with stone and scientists as they work out their formulas in laboratories. Those who create alone frequently talk to themselves. I do. My wife worries I’m growing ditsy. I prefer calling it creative.
Fundamentalist views of creation aren’t widely held today. Truth be told, no one is certain just how it all started.
Back to monkeys. Primates are creative and chatter all the time, alone or with company. Monkeys, as humans do, need food on the table. For some, termites are a staple. They burrow so deeply in the ground or in trees they are hard for monkeys to reach. Monkeys will find a stick and dig out the termites. Elegant flatware, no, but it does the job. Monkeys also solve personal hygiene problems, ingeniously.
You and I always find deer ticks on us when it’s too late. Not monkeys. They exercise sophisticated pest control. They turn what could be a disagreeable task into a social affair; they groom, gossip and catch up with family and friends while sitting around picking bugs off each other. Of all family values, none are as important as staying in touch.
Whatever divine implications Idoya’s remarkable feat (assisted, of course by scientists) may suggest, we’re considering here the mind-body connection. Modern medicine has become increasingly interested in the phenomenon. Imagine for a moment all those young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, civilians and military who have lost limbs and sustained other bodily damage in the carnage of war. Through the utilization of electronics to communicate brain wave patterns, directing them to activate physical responses, prostheses could be made to return such victims to a better life. If that could happen because a monkey helped us out, I’d be proud to call Idoya “sister.”
I read once about a phenomenon quantum physics called “entanglement.” It holds that if one part of a two-particle entity is acted upon, even though widely separated by great distances and having no apparent way of connecting to the other, the other part will react. Do our thoughts, too, effect those around us and even others far distant? After all, we humans are all particles in the same cosmos. Ajahn Munindo thinks our thoughts can do just that.
As there is a mind-body connection, there is also a mind-body-spirit or heart connection. The Venerable Ajahn Munindo is a Buddhist Monk. He believes that in the recesses of our hearts there’s a designated area where thoughts of loving-kindness live. If we take time to retreat to that place, he says, we can appropriate these thoughts of loving-kindness for ourselves, while extending them to others. Munindo suggests that we can actually create a healing mind field, not unlike the way Idoya was able to stoke up her mind and fire off neurons, vivifying a lifeless robot existing somewhere half way around the world. It’s all about putting our minds to the task.
Imagine this: on a designated day and time, all the religious communities of the world were to put their hearts and minds to this task: they would employ that same energy they once used in sectarian rivalries and instead encourage each of the faithful to travel down into that designated area of the heart-mind where loving-kindness abides. Then to stay there for maybe an hour or so, igniting neurons of benignity right and left and silently waiting for the brain waves to scatter so that they fall gently on all the peoples of the earth.
Our rewards would be greater than all the Cheerios and raisins in the world.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Erney Maher says
My wife, Margaret, and I are Chestertown residents, at Heron Point. We enjoyed this essay, as well as ‘The Bay of the Mother of God’ book.
We would like to make contact with George , maybe connect for a lunch?
My cell is 443 604-5702, email [email protected]
Thanks,
Erney