Comets in My Bedroom

Saturday I slept in till 8:00! I stood up from my prayers and walked around the bed toward the dresser, when I stopped for a moment - don't know why; perhaps I was trying to remember something. At any rate, as I stood pondering, all of a sudden I became aware of a shaft of sunlight directly in front of me. I saw that the bedroom drapes, which we usually keep closed, were open just a slit at the top. The sun was in just the angle to shine directly through that little slit. I saw particles darting through that sunbeam, almost in the way stars are portrayed slipping past a traveler in space, for it seemed that each one was charged with light: one little shaft, right before my eyes, filled with micro comets. I stood transfixed, transported to another sphere of existence, as I watched countless tiny brilliant iotas, each one on a mission, on its way from Somewhere to Somewhere. I felt that I was in the presence of things beyond my ken.

You may say that what I witnessed was no phenomenon at all, that everyone knows the air is charged with particles of all sorts and varieties, all the time. That would be true, but it would also be irrelevant; the moment itself was magic. How pathetic is modern science, wherein man seeks to reduce All to the explainable. What I witnessed, what became clear to me, is that there is, at any given moment in any given spot, unperceived Light all around us. I say, let there be Mystery!

And there is Mystery, and it is glorious, and it can be perceived, but not by the natural man. We must seek for eyes to see and yes, for ears to hear. If it had not been for the sunlight through that little gap at just that moment, if I had not stopped to ponder in just that place, I would never have apprehended that joyous phenomenon. We walk in the presence of Glory; perhaps, if we become as little children, if we walk in humility, gratitude and courage - perhaps we will be privileged to apprehend it more often.

Merry Christmas`

I feel it incumbent upon me to be a voice crying in the wilderness, just in case there are any out there who think that the unmistakable good will that pervades during this hoiday season has no direct connection to the birth of Christ. I have noticed over the last few years, a marked increase in other "reasons" to celebrate, an effort to diminish the Christian "reason for the season."
Kwanzaa is completely worthwhile; the celebration of Hannukah is totally legitimate; the winter solstice is awe-inspiring. They can enhance the season's enjoyment.
However, the effort to try to remove Christ from Christmas will yield a commensurate loss of Christmas spirit; the celebration will seem somehow empty, the good will, not "enough:" endeavors to engender those feelings will echo somewhere in the chambers of the heart that have been emptied of the one Eternal source of joy.
Humanity is not solely of the animals, not fully of the genus "mammal." Evolution is a principle of science, but is not All in All. As the poet Wordsworth expressed, "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:/ The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,/ Hath had elsewhere its setting,/And cometh from afar:/ Not in entire forgetfulness,/ And not in utter nakedness,/ But trailing clouds of glory do we come/ From God, who is our home:/ Heaven lies about us in our infancy!"
I believe that the best scientists have much in common with the greatest poets, and perhaps even with the prophets. I believe that there is really very little that separates the spirit of inquiry from the beckoning of Mystery. One blogger, Rich Blundell, shared this observation: "A scientist's Christmas has humility and dignity both. It is humble enough to admit that our knowledge of the sacred will always be incomplete, without the need to declare 'war' on anything but ignorance. There is plenty of mystery to celebrate and plenty of ignorance to fear - Merry Christmas."
This year, I suggest that instead of denying the "knowing" deep within every human soul, that we instead acknowledge it, that we, as it were, give room for it. See where it leads. Celebrate it all, and celebrate Him who is the Source of it all. "Come in, and know me better, man!"