Commentary: Life, in time, reveals all its mysteries

snyder@lasvegassun.com

Sunday, Dec. 25, 2005 | 9:10 a.m.

In the months following the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, I met a little girl named Ani, who was among a group of Armenian children brought to the Shriner's orthopedic hospital in Tampa, Fla., for treatment of injuries suffered in the disaster.

Ani was a stunning doe-eyed child of 11, with straight black hair and large, dark eyes. She spoke little, smiled easily and enjoyed playing the piano in the hospital's activity room. She had lost one of her legs in the earthquake. Tragically, it also took the lives of her mother and two siblings.

Ani's father traveled to Tampa to be with her during the months of surgeries, prosthesis fittings and physical therapy that would put her on solid footing and make her ready to return home. I was a reporter, writing her story for the local paper. One day, while we waited for Ani to finish therapy, I asked her father whether he had told Ani about her mother.

He shook his head.

"Life will show it to her," he said.

I often wonder when, and how, it did show her. But Ani's father may have been on to something. And I thought of his philosophy again this past week when the evolution vs. intelligent design debate reappeared in the wake of a federal judge's decision that it is unconstitutional to teach the creationism-inspired intelligent design theory as a scientific alternative to Charles Darwin's science-based theory of natural selection and evolution.

* * *

I was baptized in June 1961 -- the last baby to be blessed on the old fountain of Muncie, Indiana's First Presbyterian Church. My father was an executive officer with Indian Bridge steel company and a deacon in the church, where I also attended preschool.

But my parents withdrew us from its membership and Sunday services around the time I entered first grade. My father, who also tended the congregation's books, was aggravated over the manner in which collection plate donations were spent.

Some members placed their donations in the plate with a note instructing how the money was to be used. My father thought such requests should be honored. The rest of the board thought they should decide how the money was spent without telling these donors. He didn't say any more about it at home. We simply never went back.

But it was always abundantly clear that my parents' problems with the church had nothing to do with God or faith and everything to do with human beings and a lack of integrity. I was often invited to attend church with my friends, and was never discouraged from going. It was interesting, as I counted Catholics, a Mormon, a Quaker and several Baptists among my circle of gal pals.

I remember one day, about the time I was in sixth grade, that I asked Mother whether she believed in God. As usual, she answered my question with a question.

"Everything around us fits together -- the trees, the flowers the seasons," she said. "And I wonder, didn't someone have to figure all that out?"

To this day, I don't know that she ever found her own answer to that question. And she obviously wasn't going to give me mine. I was to figure it out for myself.

* * *

Science shows us how the natural world has evolved and progressed -- the systems, the methods, the equations, the formulas. The mysteries of all of it are there for us to unlock through academic and scientific study.

As we have evolved as a species, we have developed stronger and deeper abilities to search for and find these answers. Over the ages, we have learned to create the technology and tools that help us learn more. It's a good system.

Like other children of my era, whose homework could be finished in an hour and whose televisions received only four channels rather than 70, I spent a lot of time poking around the natural world. I stared at the clouds, messed with crawdads in the creek, picked wild raspberries with my best pal Julie and climbed the apple trees in Mr. Hatley's orchard.

The order of life -- birth, growth, death -- was apparent daily. More importantly, I had the time to think about it on my own in the environment I found most suitable. My world was not cluttered with a string of scheduled activities. My senses were free from a constant electronic media assault.

I am glad to have had this opportunity, which also didn't include an adult standing in front of the classroom giving me five explanations for the answer to life's toughest question: How did we get here? Teachers simply showed us the science of it, as teachers should.

The rest, well, I'm still learning that in the manner my mother taught me -- on my own, by being patient enough and staying quiet long enough for life to show it to me. Is intelligent design real? That's not for me to determine for anyone else.

But a kid probably could learn a lot about the answer on his own by ditching their extracurricular schedule and turning off the distracting artificial noise. Life can't show him anything if doesn't have the time and space to see it.

Susan Snyder can be reached at 259-4082 or at snyder@lasvegassun.com.