Did you ever lay on your back in a field on a perfectly clear moonless night and cling to the grass because, surrounded by stars, you felt you might fall off the earth and float away into space?
Did you ever stand on the top of a mountain peak so high that you thought you could reach out and touch the clouds?
Did you ever stroll along a trackless shoreline so beautiful that you felt you were walking on air?
Sometimes more than gravity weighs me down, but there is a wonder in nature that lifts me up and pulls me away.
Even with Newton attaching scientific "gravitas" to the mystery of it all, I marvel that I am not centripically flung out into space!
Occasionally, I picture myself standing sideways, feet attached to this planet, and I ask, "What keeps me here on this earth?" (paraphrased: "Why am I here?")
Spinning at more than 1,000 miles per hour and racing around the sun at nearly 70,000 miles per hour, I'm dizzy with questions beyond this material realm of Earth, Water, Sky; Solid, Liquid, Gas?
I'm aware of the life-sustaining significance of our sphere's 23 degree tilt in relation to the sun, but when I spin a globe and imagine myself standing on its surface, I find myself contemplating how this planet is alined within the vast universe. Is there even a right-side-up, a top or bottom from where God sits?
I'm a speck on a rock on the edge of a tiny galaxy somewhere in this incomprehensibly large universe.
It is when I imagine spinning in reference to the universe that I loose a bit of my "self-centered" bent and have a more accurate alinement with reality.
I live here, on earth... in a physical world of laundry and dishes, mealtimes and bedtimes. Too often I set aside the thrilling pursuit of science and philosophy to get on with the business of living only to find that real living is keeping the wonder and the learning in the everyday.
Ptolemy's theory bumped the world off center, but Copernicus turned the world
up-side-down with the notion that we are not the center of the
universe!
We stack our "sense" on the two cents of those who came before us, but the more we know the smaller the wise become in their own eyes.
Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, the thoughts of scientific genius are common knowledge even to average country folk like me, and I wonder how little do we really know?
More philosopher than scientist, I see knowledge as a tool to assist me in my higher pursuit of wisdom; still I remember: "Human wisdom is so tiny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God." 1 Cor. 1:25 (The Message)
It is when I am thinking higher thoughts of God and am asking Him the deeper questions that I understand my significance and find perspective on my place in this world.
Did you ever stand on the top of a mountain peak so high that you thought you could reach out and touch the clouds?
Did you ever stroll along a trackless shoreline so beautiful that you felt you were walking on air?
Sometimes more than gravity weighs me down, but there is a wonder in nature that lifts me up and pulls me away.
Even with Newton attaching scientific "gravitas" to the mystery of it all, I marvel that I am not centripically flung out into space!
Occasionally, I picture myself standing sideways, feet attached to this planet, and I ask, "What keeps me here on this earth?" (paraphrased: "Why am I here?")
Spinning at more than 1,000 miles per hour and racing around the sun at nearly 70,000 miles per hour, I'm dizzy with questions beyond this material realm of Earth, Water, Sky; Solid, Liquid, Gas?
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| used with permission |
I'm a speck on a rock on the edge of a tiny galaxy somewhere in this incomprehensibly large universe.
It is when I imagine spinning in reference to the universe that I loose a bit of my "self-centered" bent and have a more accurate alinement with reality.
I live here, on earth... in a physical world of laundry and dishes, mealtimes and bedtimes. Too often I set aside the thrilling pursuit of science and philosophy to get on with the business of living only to find that real living is keeping the wonder and the learning in the everyday.
Ptolemy's theory bumped the world off center, but Copernicus turned the world
up-side-down with the notion that we are not the center of the
universe!We stack our "sense" on the two cents of those who came before us, but the more we know the smaller the wise become in their own eyes.
Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, the thoughts of scientific genius are common knowledge even to average country folk like me, and I wonder how little do we really know?
More philosopher than scientist, I see knowledge as a tool to assist me in my higher pursuit of wisdom; still I remember: "Human wisdom is so tiny, so impotent, next to the seeming absurdity of God." 1 Cor. 1:25 (The Message)
It is when I am thinking higher thoughts of God and am asking Him the deeper questions that I understand my significance and find perspective on my place in this world.
