How do you give a turtle the Heimlich?

I bought a turtle a couple weeks ago.  His name is Peterson.  Tonight I was eating some Ramen-style soup in front of him, and he was looking longingly at me as I slurped what looked like bunches of worms down my throat.  I knew the noodles don’t have any nutritional value for him (or for me), but I thought it couldn’t hurt if I dropped one of the re-hydrated meatballs that come in the packet into his tank.  Now he looks like he’s gagging.

Peterson loves me.  He also trusts me enough to eat anything I endorse by wagging my finger behind it.  That wasn’t always the case.  He’s come to love and trust me because he is needy, and he’s noticed a pattern of me meeting his needs.  Now, I’m of the belief that the physical world is full of metaphors (and not by accident) that help us to understand the spiritual.  I think pets provide a lot of these metaphors.  I also think human relationships provide a lot of metaphors.  I love my parents, but I don’t love them just because.  If it were not for them feeding me for all those years I could not feed myself, and continuing to support me even after I probably could have survived without them, it would be impossible for me to love them.  They were my introduction to human love, and without them certain aspects of it never would have become part of my schema.  I could not love them if they had not first shown me love.

If you weren’t on to me already, you know where this is headed now.  Anyone who dutifully attended his Awana club as a kid (I think I went once a week for a month) remembers 1 John 4:19, “We love because He first loved us.”  I can’t help but say it with a kid’s voice now.  I doubt I ever heard about “total depravity” from my Awana teachers, but I think that’s the lesson I took away from that verse.  I know it doesn’t go over too well with the modern mindset to say that humans are incapable of anything, especially when you start talking about God in the same conversation.  Nobody wants to hear about how people can’t love apart from God.  But I believe humans are incapable of anything original; it is all derived.  Much as it would make me seem noble and dignified to say I could love my parents no matter what they would have done to me, that’s not the case.  Nobody brought himself into the world, and nobody discovers love on his own.  Furthermore, the race of humanity did not genesis itself, and even all our creativity is manipulation of what we’ve already seen or been given.  I would never have expected Peterson to love me if I did not feed him.  And just as I could not love my parents if they had not been loving, we are all needy and could never love our Creator without Him first loving us.

By the way, I don’t see how anyone can be comfortable riding horses.  They are such big, powerful animals, and they don’t need anything from me.  They can eat grass just fine without me.  As I see it, I have nothing over them and there is no reason for them to love me.  All I do is sit on them and tell them to carry me here and there.  I’m pretty sure they’re plotting to revolt one of these days.

-Baggervais

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