Search This Blog

Friday, October 01, 2010

The "heart" of the matter




"Guard your heart for in it flows the wellspring of life" Proverbs 4:23

For the longest time, that was just thought to simply be a poetic prose from the Bible, nothing more. But new scientific research is beginning to show that the heart actually stores memories and events, even after a person's death. In recent years, there has been several accounts of people who have received a heart transplant and began to experience a phenomenon where they experienced characteristics of the person from whom they had the transplant.

There was one story where someone received a transplant from someone who had been a murder victim. Soon after receiving the transplant, that person began to have nightmares and flashbacks. They began to see visions of their murderer and feel the sensation of terror that the victim had felt just before they died. The account of the person who had received the transplant actually led to the capture of the murderer.

Other cases that I have heard of where someone received a transplant of some sort (not necesarily the heart) and they began to take on the characteristics of the person they received the organ from. In one case, a person who had never like rollercoasters suddenly found themselves with a strange affinity for rollercoasters that they had before. And there are others who reported changes in their personality shortly after receiving a transplant.

It was one thought that science and philosophy were incompatible but the more we learn, the more we are seeing that the two actually compliment each other as oppose to compromise each other. When the Bible says "Guard your heart for in it flows the wellspring of life", it was more than just a poetic prose. Now we see that there scientific value in the meaning behind those verses.

As I sit here in the Vancouver airport on the verge of my destiny, I wonder what would people experience if they got my heart in a transplant. Joy? Fear? Curiousity? How would it affect their personal lives if they began taking on my characteristics? Would it be positive or negative effects? During the next 10 months, there is going to be a whole whirlwind of memories that my heart is going to store. If one day my heart were to makes it's home in someone else's body, my highest hope is that from my heart would overflow a wellspring of life like a rushing waterfall.

Amorous Alpacas

Amorous Alpacas