Perceiving God
I see a young man standing in the sun at a
bus stop. He stands with a backpack slung over one shoulder. He has a pleasant
face and he looks purposeful. He is of university age. He is travelling locally
so he may attend a technical college. He is living in the moment. His mind may
be on what lies ahead in his day, an assignment, a project, a person with whom
he will spend some time. I surmise that he is not thinking, "How did I get
into this world?" "Why am I here?" Big picture thinking for this
fellow as the bus moves toward him, is probably concerned with nothing more extensive
than what he will do after graduation?
Yet, seated in my car, I pass him and my
eyes are multi-tasking, observing the road ahead, vehicles attempting to merge,
the speed I am travelling, the time on my car clock, and the blue sky that expands
forever. I am projecting my thoughts into the frontiers of space and to the
metaphysical reaches of origins. I am a man with a faith but fleetingly I seek
to consider how a person without faith can imagine the genesis of all things.
I think of the other 7.125 billion humans on
this planet, 2.1 billion of whom are overweight like me. Still we expect to
live 70 years on average, and that's that. We will be gone. Others will take
our place just as they presently are doing at a rate of 1.2% annually, which is
why only twenty years ago we were 6.5 billion people. Forty years ago there
were only 3.999 billion people on earth, and while we have almost doubled the
world population, we still depend completely and solely upon this biosphere and
minerals of this sphere. I marvel at my earth home being one of the four
terrestrial planets in our Solar System, yet it is the densest planet and the
third from the Sun, and earth is the only planet that is known to accommodate
life. Mercury, Venus and Mars have not supported life. But why here on this
earth and since when were we here, and who or what started this?
This is what my mind is doing as I drive to
my gym to keep this body healthy for a few more years.
