One of the most profound things I've come to believe after more than four and a half decades on this beautiful spinning rock is that mystery abounds. I don't know if one needs to believe in a divine creator to come to this realization, nor am I sure if I want to expound upon those beliefs now. Suffice to say I have them, and they continue to unfold and evolve with each passing day. But I can confidentially say, and share with you, that I believe in divine poetry. One can look at the glorious mountain ranges found on our breathtaking continent, formed over billions of years from earthquakes pushing up meters of metamorphic rock, collecting tectonic plates, and glaciers carving rifts and valleys with melting ice and snow that eventually trickled down to create deep, cold mountain lakes.
Regardless of whether or not one wants to place a firmly religious connotation to or on this process, this is, to my mind, a miracle. It's a miracle of time and matter. A miracle of chaos. A miracle of creation. We don't need literalism to believe in divinity. Besides, literalism kills poetry: more specifically, the poetry of gazing upon grandeur and explaining its majestic oldness away with literalistic verse and young earth theory.
I know there is a question of "why does it really matter?" And the truth is, maybe it doesn't in the grand scheme of unfolding life. I certainly don't write these words in a vain attempt to try to convince you of anything. I'm not a park ranger or a scientist and I certainly don't purport to be an expert on scripture or religion. But I do think that the possibility of oldness and evolution and an unfolding creation story that doesn't require literalism matters in our ability to hold wonder and stoke imagination. Among the many flaws of literalism would be that it allows us, and often even requires us, to leave our wonder and imagination at the door. It's like choosing a KOA campsite off the interstate rather than sleeping under the stars by a grandiose mountain lake formed over billions of years.
Literalism says: you don't have to think or wonder or doubt or even deconstruct. It simply hands you a one-size-fits-all belief system, wrapped up in a tidy bow.
Call me silly, maybe even brazenly foolish. But I'll take the mystery that abounds. I'll fumble for words, seeking an understanding of the divine poetry that surrounds me. This is the miracle that we're all a part of - as a witness, and maybe even as an essential component.
Mystery abounds. What a wonder to behold. Amen.
