In a properly ordered world we should all go
out onto the hills on such days and know that life is innately good. Enough,
perhaps, that we take time to see and feel and sense the fundamental strength and continuing hospitality of the natural world
around us..We find meaning in it that accommodate the best of our beliefs. So
we stand in the open, on such a clean, clear September day, and see the bold horizons of our faith, the hills of our strength,
the granite substance of our enduring purpose.
Hal Borland, This Hill, This Valley.
Chalet LAbri, September 1, 2003...acg
September arrives once more as summer matures into autumn. The
substance of meaning, which nature proclaims in change and flow, is everywhere we turn and engage our senses. Life risen from seed and bulbs to bud, blossom, and pod, scattered for next seasons resurrection, is all
about us. The other day on the golf course I mistook a large fluff of milkweed
seeds for a golf ball that was blown from some great distance to the fairway. Each
gust of wind now brings a shower of a few pinecones from the giant trees fronting the chalet.
The petals of black-eyed susans and Echinacea that have glorified my garden for three months are quickly falling away,
leaving brown pods, the silent memory of bees and butterflies, the potency of pollen, readiness of the egg, and their fertile
union. Somewhere therein I perceive the big breakthrough: space ,time, and life
in endless cycles, the universe synchronized in perfect harmony since time began, a Supreme Genius with His hands on the strings
of interplanetary messengersblessed assurance.life everlasting!
As if the enduring cycles of all I may observe from my miniscule speck on earth were not
enough, these days a close encounter with Mars makes unfathomable my perception of the cosmos.
Astronomers estimate that the Red Planet has not been this near Earth for 60,000 years.
Astrophysicists with their high powered telescopes and sophisticated computers measuring vast distances and extreme
temperatures have yet to define the boundaries of the observable universe, let alone the approximate 50 billion visible and
estimated trillion invisible galaxies beyond our own, each of which pop off a supernova, the light reaching Earth a century
later. They do know that our nearest galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, radiates
500 million times the energy of the sun. According to Bob Berman, author of Cosmic Adventure and Secrets of the Night Sky, Oriental records for the year 1006
tell us that a temporary object (star?) shone some 100 times more brilliantly than the Evening Star and cast distinct shadows
on the countryside. Could such an object have orbited near the earth and like
Mars in 2003, explain the star the wise men followed to Bethlehem when Christ was born?
Life out there in other galaxies?.Possibly. Not how much but how little we know! Just now, let me be satisfied
with the glory of September woodlands and ripeness and a falling leaf...
The answer to the question of God has profound
implications for our lives here on earth.So we owe it to ourselves to look at the evidence, perhaps beginning with the Old
and New Testaments. (C. S.) Lewis reminds us that the evidence lies all around
us: We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito. And the incognito
is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend. In fact to come awake. Still more to
remain awake.
From The
Question of God by Armand M. Nicholi, Jr