God Moments

Although I said last night's post would be the last of the religion week, in reading it over again I feel it was lacking something. It was a very deep, with long words and complicated sentence structure. Some readers may have enjoyed that style, but there are perhaps more effective ways to convey God's beauty and majesty.  Emotion and feeling can be just as powerful a means of knowing as can reason and logic. So rather than trying to use high brow language to dissect the meaning of the "mystic emotion", I'll instead try to convey that emotion.

I'd like you to look out your window right now. I know not what you see, but when I do it I see my front yard. Every day I pass by that front yard without giving it a second glance. I don't stop to notice the millions of leaves on the trees lining my road, or the billions of blades of grass in my yard and my neighbors yards. I don't notice the worms, flies, insects, bugs, squirrels, rabbits, or other animals which inhabit those lawns. Each of those leaves, grass, and organisms are broken down even further into parts, which are broken into cells, which are broken into atoms. There is a specific organization, an immaculate order, to everything. Even the non-living things are fascinatingly intricate. The pavement on my driveway consists of bits and pieces of thousands of rocks from all over the world. The clouds above have trillions of little water droplets, each with innumerable little hydrogen and oxygen atoms. There is more that exists in your field of vision each time you casually glance out the window than you could ever fully appreciate if you studied it for a million years. Turn your gaze inwards, and examine each and every object in your house, each specially crafted tool for any purpose. You'll find you have matter from all over the world, which wound up in your dwelling through an enormously complex sequence of events. And this is just in and around your house. Now think of all the places you've been in your life, and all the things you've ever seen, and multiply this quantity by that figure. And this is just sight! Think of every song you've ever heard, and know that each was produced by many specially and intricately crafted instruments, with many musicians with many hours of training. Every bird you've ever heard chirp, every tiny, unnoticed rumble of the refrigerator. Why stop at sound? Ponder every smell, or taste, sensation on your skin that you've ever sensed in the entirety of your life. Ponder, if you can, the summation of every component of anything you have ever perceived. This is an incalculable, infinite sum, yet this figure is infinitesimal when compared to all of existence! You are but one of over 6 billion people on earth right now, each with an equally immense perception (depending on their age). Speaking of age, this counts only those humans who are presently alive, to say nothing of every human that has ever lived. Time is infinite. And why stop with humans? Each animal, going back to the beginnings of the earth, has seen and heard and smelled and felt an equally long list of other things. The beginning of the earth was at least 4 and a half billion years ago. Each of those years had 365.2422 days, each day had 24 hours which had 60 minutes which had 60 seconds, and in each of these seconds there was an infinitely larger existence than you could ever possibly perceive in a lifetime. And why stop at Earth? The earth is only 1/9th of the planets in this one solar system, which is a millionth at most of all the solar systems in the galaxy, which is another millionth at most of all the galaxies in the universe, and scientists are beginning to suspect alternate universes. Space, like time, is infinite. Even these simple scientific rules that we humans claim to be able to understand, when placed in context, are utterly baffling in magnitude. It is futile to even attempt to wrap ones mind around all which has ever existed or will exist.

I began that lengthy paragraph trying to convey an emotion, or a feeling. When faced with the above realizations, what feelings do we have? Awe, certainly. Wonder. Amazement. Perhaps fear. But mostly, I feel humility. I feel humble because I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I am an infinitely small and insignificant part of existence. I know that every other human who has lived or ever will live is too. I know there exists that which is greater than I, that which is beyond my wildest comprehension, that which is superior to human value and beyond human capabilities. I know there exists that which is superior to mere mortals. I know, in other words, that there is a God.

That emotion is what gives me my faith, and I am overpowered by this emotion when I hear a beautiful song, see a beautiful photo or landscape, or am by myself under under the stars late at night. I call these God Moments, and whenever I have them I'll try to post whatever prompted it on the blog.