Saturday Night Philosophizing

or Things I Think While Rosie's Taking a Pee

Photo from here

I like to stand outside on a clear night and look up at the stars.  I consider their immense distance, and ponder the enormity of space.  It's so vast and, in a way, so simple.  There is existence and nonexistence.  Ok, there is energy and heat--extreme, unimaginable heat that would obliterate us in a nanosecond.  And there is cold--absence of energy, a stillness beyond death.

And yet here I stand, in spite of that cruel simplicity, feet planted firmly on this spinning globe.  Standing upright on my grassy lawn. Why should there be grass?  In all the vast reaches and vagaries of the universe, why should grass have come to be?  And not just grass, but Bermuda grass, fescue, rye and crabgrass; such a variety of something that didn't really need to exist in the first place.

Then my eye falls on the dog as she wanders back up the driveway.  How amazing it is that two such improbable creatures should exist, should have found each other and should have created this strong intangible bond.  We call it love, and value it above all else.  And it has nothing to do with the temperature of space, or the distance between stars.

Oh, how we complicate our lives.  What difference does it make, faced with the infinity of the universe, if our lawns are cut or our improbable woven-fiber-spun-from-cotton-seed-fluff shirts are sufficiently ironed?  I think, I should just relax and enjoy the fact of being.  Rosie is here, I am breathing, there is a Miss Chef organism on this planet who will come home here tonight and make our family complete.  What else could I expect from this massive, incomprehensible universe?

As I turn back toward the light and warmth of the house I have to wonder--is it all a miracle?  God's great  plan?  An elaborate accident of physics and chemistry?

And I decide, why not all three?  God's great plan works through physics and chemistry, and the complexity, unlikely simplicity and sheer beauty of it all is a miracle to me.