Sunset Rambling
I want to begin by saying this is *specifically* not a comment about anyone specific who reads this journal. Re-reading it I realized it could be taken that way and I wanted to be very clear on that.
As I left the gym today I was stopped in my tracks, stopped dead and struck dumb by the beauty of the evening Sunset, a few low clouds scudding around the perfect dome of the darkening sky. I stood there in the parking lot transfixed for over 5 minutes, taking in every hint of every color.
I am an engineer and I consider myself at least a proto-scientist. I maintain a healthy interest in science and technology outside of my purview and I am always learning. I understand a lot of what made that sunset, and yet in it's existence I see the proof of the existence of God.
I worry a lot about people. Atheism or at the very least a kind of disgruntled Agnosticism has become fashionable and cool, and people think that advanced science as a sort of antithesis of God - if you believe in one the other is silly. I think God is good for people, or at the very least Spirituality in some form. Believing in something outside and greater than ourselves, something that has (or had) a plan that we may be some tiny, insignificant part of is humbling. A lot of people who truly don't believe seem to have a feeling of being lost or hopeless that even in my worst times I've never had. Even if I said I didn't when I was young, I've always believed in something greater. I've always believed in the existence of the human soul, which I consider to be inseparable from my personal understanding of God.
So I stand there and marvel at the sunset. I marvel that the millions and billions of variables necessary to create that perfect sunset at that time have come together to create it. I am awed by the sweep and heave of human and natural history that have brought me there at that time and place to appreciate it. I am rendered speechless by the sheer improbability that I would have both the faculties to perceive it's beauty, even as imperfectly as a surely do, and the emotional context to be so struck by it's beauty rather than keeping my head down and my brain concentrated on the tasks of food, shelter, mating and what have you. My existence is an amazing gift from my deity, the sunset is just so much delicious icing on the cake.
Amen.