Today Darwin (or at least his bones in Westminister Abbey) turns 200. It is also the 150th anniversary of the publication "The Origin of Species," the book above all others (there might be a bit, but just a bit of hyperbole here) that changed my life.
I grew up Mormon. To save the feelings of family members that might, just might, read this blog, I will not mention the nightmare that this was for me as a child, but basically, I could not get the world to make any sense at all. Here I was, a child, faced with a world controlled by a nightmare of a supreme being (any surprise that I was afraid, among other things, of my closet?)--God has a tissy fit and drowns everyone but a single family? God hardens Pharoh's heart? Then why, if God caused it, is it Pharoh's fault? And what's with Job? That, combined with my father's rather more than dangerous line of work (he was a navigator in the air force, friends of mine regularly disappeared off of the air force bases we lived on when their fathers died) gave me a vision of a world that was a darker place than I could handle.
I was 10ish. And severly depressed; which my parents, due undoubtedly to the time and their own fanaticism, didn't recognize as an illness; rather, I was trouble. An honest assesment for a mormon family, which has a very narrow range of "trouble." In their own defense, I think I read much more fundamentalism into my childhood than actually existed. But, you see , I paid obsessive compulsive razor sharp attention at church ( a feat that has served me well in other aspects of my life, just not this one) and believed that my parents must believe all the wacky stuff I heard over the pulpit. I also didn't trust them enough to ever (ever! My mother died without a heart-to-heart with me) tell them my difficulties, due to the fear I had of being thrown out of the house if I dared express any sort of insufficiently rah-rah-nature to the totally alien world I was born into--I was a coward. I blame myself.
But, my parents had a copy of the "Great Books" in its own bookshelf in the house. This saved my sanity, or quite possibly my life. One of the volumes included both "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man," by the man--Darwin-- himself. I read them. I devoured them.
It was odd, my uber religious family was so pleased that I'd pick up and actually absorb such awkward tomes. Perhaps they were more accepting of my plight than I understood at the time. I'd sleep with the two books and wake up with bruises.
Those two books changed my life. Evolution! The world was beautiful and finally made sense. Monsters there certainly were, but understandable non-omnipotent fickle ones without an odd taste for goat meat smoke and a hankering for smiting.
Thank you Darwin, thank you Mom and Dad.
With all my love to the living and those that have passed on;
Djinn
