Aver Divine Design 

Anno Domini 2009 lurches to the halfway point. Rain, thunderous rain, go away, daily from this swampy plain. Deep Southerners assure us these late spring rains are expected most afternoons. and evenings, the natural climate change that delivers blushing peach cobbler summer.

Through the window the backyard beckons me. The winter stubble of dormant lawns shimmer grassy green, throbbing with gnats, worms, fire ants, beetles, and centipedes, grass that is.

Centipedes seem freakish as they goose step by on a hundred legs. Yet this predatory invertebrate's French name is apropos for the yard's grass. Over the sandy clay centipede grass, sends out short runners that grab the ground to root and multiply new centipede runners showering tufts of grass like fourth of July fireworks. 

Plucking one blade from a runner, I crease it between my fingers. Folded along its vein this blade arched like a woman's eyebrow, yet penciled in the colored variation of a spring onion, pale white to God's green. Waxy on the surface, defined on the edge, flexible, this single blade averred to me a great truth about design.

I write in a dining room of clean Shaker design. Buddy was ten when God gave us the means to commission, via a retail store, a long table and chairs crafted and signed by a local Amish carpenter. We chose a wood stain that was local, however we also chose a low buffet cabinet to be made by a neighboring state's carpenter. Legally one couldn't buggy ship or mail paint cans interstate. So someone (not Amish) drove the car with can across the border. 

Years later, a layoff moved us 284 miles across the same border. Tighter space demanded a hutch for the buffet. A furniture dealer examined the unsigned piece and discerned its maker! He said he could also ask that man to match the aged stain's richer color.

The deliverymen thought we bought the buffet from their store, a tribute to the carpenter who well served us.

Back in the morning room I glance out at majestic pines that stand at attention and raise their branched arms up and out. In the wind the centipedes dance as the trees clap hands in praise, tributes to a carpenter of intelligent design.

So on your holiday jaunts into parks try

to toss theoretical bang and chance aside.

Aver the intelligence behind creation by

stepping into the church along the roadside.

*Image is a small, dense object only 12 miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short. The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand.  Image Credits: NASA/CXC/CfA/P. Slane et al.