I don't wear a lot of jewelry. Usually only my wedding ring, which has never been off my finger since Bettie put it there sometime in the last millennium.
When my father died I inherited all his stuff, most of which I keep in a drawer merely as mementos. One piece of jewelry, however, was special: his mother's diamond engagement ring.
The diamond is of modest size, reflecting the financial status of a young swain at the close of the 19th century. A jeweler friend created a more masculine setting from the melted gold of the original, and when I wear it I like the thought of being connected to Alfred and Mary and the long line of intrepid Irish forbears whose genes I carry.
But that good-feeling form of tangible connectedness pales in comparison to a new technology which makes it possible to make grandmothers into diamonds. Literally! No kidding!
Diamonds are basically carbon. Human remains are mostly carbon, which can be extracted and subjected to enormous heat and pressure over a couple of years, made into a real diamond and certified with an inscription laser-embedded in it by the Gemological Institute of America. Check it out.
Had the technology been available when she died, it would have set me back between $3,000 and $30,000, depending on size and cut, to make grandmother into a diamond. But just think! I could have passed on to my great-grandson his great-great-great grandmother to wear on his finger.
The whole idea gives me gollywobbles. It also raises a religious question.
In many Christian churches, including mine, recitation of the Nicene Creed or the Apostle's Creed is an integral part of every worship service. Even Christian groups who do not use the creeds as the stated summary of their beliefs find little in them with which they disagree.
Both of these primitive declarations of faith include the words "we believe … in the resurrection of the body."
Ooops! If my carbonized God-fearing Presbyterian grandmother-cum-diamond was adorning my finger as we said those words, I would have to ask "If that's true, how is she going to get out of this?" And more to the point, how am I going to deal with my own dishonest hypocrisy when I say something which I know to be literally impossible?
This is a dilemma characteristic of our linear-thinking, literal-minded Western culture when we try to transfer to our lives the thoughts of people who lived two millennia ago, in a culture that bears little resemblance to ours, using a language as different from ours as tree leaves are from leaves in a table.
An empty tomb, Jesus visually recognized walking around the cemetery garden engaging in conversation — these biblical word pictures clearly imply that his resurrected body was the same one that his friends had known, like he stopped living for three days, then got life back and picked up where he had left off.
That's not resurrection — it's resuscitation.
Whatever resurrection is, if I thought I might emerge on the other side of whatever death is still embodied in the same pudgy piece of protoplasm I've been in so long, I believe I would just pass on the opportunity.
So I'm willing to just leave it as a mystery beyond comprehension and beyond words, a truth I don't have to be able to wrap my mind around to accept.
What I mean when I say the words may not be identical to what others mean. I know for sure that I don't know for sure what it's all about, nor does anyone else. Not understanding does not make me a hypocrite when I say I believe it.
And I'm quite content with Grandmother's engagement diamond. Wearing her on my finger would just complicate things.
Editor's note: W. Jackson "Jack" Wilson is a psychologist, an Episcopal priest, a sometime academic and a writer living in Colorado. He writes with humor, whimsy, passion and penetrating insight into the human condition. And in Pushkin, Russia, a toilet is named in his honor.
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