To Sing Frogs Chapter 25c

Changing Kirrill’s clothes just before rushing him out of the orphanage

While I loved the scientific implications his work made possible, for Friar William the simplest solution was that God did everything. Furthermore, he believed that any distinction between right and wrong depended only on the will of the Supreme Being (a bit impractical for me).

“The rebel” was not above questioning his religious leaders either. Such behavior caused him to be cited before the Pontifical Court. He was confined at Avignon while awaiting “examination” (the inquisition had such lovely words for “torture”). Fortunately he escaped before the “questioning” was complete. Had he not, it may well have resulted in his execution. I would have been lucky to fare as well as he did had I lived in his day. (Imagine me asking the inquisitors if God could create a rock so heavy that even He couldn’t lift it.)

As much as their methods differed (i.e. intellect vs. emotion) I knew William of Ockham and Amy would be on the same page today. I still wanted to disagree to a certain extent with my wife and one of my rebel heroes. Coincidence, though, was becoming less and less of a simple solution to the events continuing to play out in our adoption experience.

Somebody wins the lottery once and we attribute the event to pure dumb luck. When they take the money a second time it’s an amazing coincidence. If a third check is written to the same name, you start an investigation and lock people up for committing a list of felonies. The likelihood that “coincidence” is a legitimate explanation decreases proportionally with the number of times it is used as the answer.

Previously I had seen a few stalks of corn growing in the hay-field of our adoptions. Amy called them miracles. I was more inclined to call them randomly dropped seeds. It wouldn’t make sense for a farmer to intentionally scatter a few mismatched kernels. The simplest solution to several inexplicable corn stalks growing in a hay field would be “coincidence” or “accidental” whether Amy wanted to admit it or not. The more I looked at these random ears of corn in our hay field, the more it was beginning to look like a row no matter how unlikely it seemed. Mathematics does allow for rows of crops happening by accident. The odds against it are so extreme that reasonable people don’t even consider the possibility.

 

 

Denney warmed up to the girls more and more. By the time we returned from dinner he was running around and squealing every bit as much as they were.

“Isn’t it sweet?” Amy said. “Look how much different he acts than when he was at the orphanage. All he needed was a family.”

“Uh-huh.” All he needed was a couple of hours. A cup of coffee wouldn’t have hurt, either.

“I never would have imagined he could have been this active and happy so soon!”

“Uh-huh.”

A shriek and a scream bounced off the undecorated walls of the hotel room. I turned to see Denney and Celeste in a tug-of war with a toy truck. Celeste was a year older. She won. Before Amy or I could do anything, Denney began a blood-curdling wail while stomping his feet rapidly. Then he pitched himself backward. His head thudded against the thin unpadded carpet before any other part of his body. He continued to scream while rolling back and forth on the floor and beating his feet as if he was running.

Stitches tantrums. My brother Rod threw them as a child. My family had always used the graphic description from the time he went to the doctor to have a gash on his forehead sewn up after one of his fits. I guess that explained the scar above Denney’s eye. Really it explained a whole lot more.

Amy rushed to Denney and picked him up. The kicking and screaming didn’t diminish. I took the toy from Celeste and stood her in the corner. I had to place the side of my leg against her to keep the child in place while she pitched a fit of her own. My wife was trying to calm Denney while she looked at me, dumbfounded. “He never did anything like that before!”

“Sure he did. How do you think he got that scar above his eye?”

“What? We never saw him act like this!”

“Maybe he just needs some more of Grandma’s medicine.”

“What?!”

“I told you he was drunk before.”

Go to other sections of To Sing Frogs

Go to John M. Simmons’ blog