Ponderings

I've been reflecting this morning upon Paige's post. I like this post. I like the way she thinks, and I feel that her struggles (she is much more effective than I) are often akin to mine. She has a very strong faith, which I respect deeply - although I'm more of an extremely spiritual agnostic... Richard Feynman's words resonate heavily with my personal paradigm:

It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on - that this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama.

Although in my heart I do believe that God is unknowable, I have always felt a benevolence and a love directed at me, which I also don't understand. I sometimes imagine that my existence is remotely analogous to a little cricket standing between elephants communicating via extremely low frequency sound waves; I feel something, I know it's big, but I don't have the capacity to do anything beyond wonder about it and marvel at it, and I surmise that even my wondering is simple and idiotic, and it serves no purpose beyond my own amusement.

When I read Paige's words:

So you see, normal for me is the endless struggle, no matter what place in life I am in, to have a correct view of my identity and to understand that my value is not purely tied to gifts, abilities, and what I am doing. The deal is, I could let my identity be driven by my successes and failures and the importance of my work in the eyes of society. However, that is a frightening road to travel on. There are far more failures than successes and there are always people doing a better job. The other road is the one of surrender.

I think I understand, at least a little bit. I'm not writing to make a point, just to express my appreciation.

And if you are interested in the details regarding the felicitous events (or as my dad so eloquently put it, "fortuitous evolution") of last Saturday morning, Steven said it best. ;)