Stop and smell the Mystery!

I recently was struck by how silly we humans can be.  We accept blindly and openly so many mysteries and unknown aspects of life, and then in the same moment, without even batting an eye, reject so many others.  We live in a reality marked by the mathematical impossibility that any of us should exist in the first place, yet we live each day like it’s nothing, as if each breath we take is not a miracle.  

A couple years ago stumbled upon some aerial pictures online taken of a previously unknown tribe (to the outside world) in Brazil.  The people from the village were all outside looking up at the helicopter with spears in hand ready to defend their homes.  They had never seen a helicopter before, can you imagine what must have been going on in their minds? “What the heck is that thing floating in the air?”

What if you were to take one of these people to your home to show them what the modern world is like?  How strange would it be if you walked in your house and turned on your lights or TV and their reaction was anything less than amazed?  What if you opened up your fridge, or turned on the hot water and they just shrugged their shoulders as if it was no big deal?  And yet this is what we do each and every day as we coast through life and pretend that existence as we know it is as simple as our daily list of activities and chores.  Our rational, scientific minds have stunted our ability to get under the familiar and shallow experiences of life and wrestle with the hanging questions that remain when we reach the end of our understanding.

Take music for example.  It seems simple, and yet it’s so dynamic.  Author Karen Armstrong says this of music, “It is the most corporeal of the arts; it is produced by breath, voice, horsehair, shells, guts, and skins and reaches and resonances in our bodies at levels deeper than will or consciousness”

We are romanced by the invisible vibrations of sound waves sung and played, and yet the mysterious nature of music is seen as nothing more than coincidental, nothing more than waves of nothing floating through the air. Music follows the basic and logical structure of chords and scales, but why does it have so much power?  Where does it’s transcendent ability come from?  What does it say about us that our emotions, moods, and personalities can be moved by music?  What is music?

Our apathetic response to reality doesn’t end there.

All around us, all the time, we are spinning at unimaginable speeds, in an incomprehensibly expansive universe, and most of the time we don’t even notice the stars above us.  What’s holding it altogether?  How did we end up?

When tragedy strikes in disaster or crime, our hearts grind with anguish at the sight of injustice.   But why?  Where does this deep longing for justice and fairness come from?  Isn’t it just the way things are?  Shouldn’t we be used to it by now?

When a child is born, and later a personality develops, we don’t even stop to wonder what drives life.  We carry on interacting with co-workers, family members, and baristas without ever noticing that they’re alive – and how amazing this fact is.  What generating force propels egg and seed to become a life, to grow, split, and create flesh and mind?  Where does our consciousness come from, is it limited to our bodies?

If we touch an object we are touching a collection of atoms gathered together in a specific place and order.  If we were to look closer we would see that the space within and between each atom is mostly made of emptiness.  In fact, the majority of all matter is empty space.  Most of everything, is nothing.  And yet we grab, sit on, throw and catch an endless list of things without even wondering what these things actually are.

And then there is love… When we experience love, any form of it, our reaction exhibits our aloofness the most.  What a paradox of reality, that in this universe of supposed accidental and coincidental existence, cold and personality-less matter, and endless cycles of destruction and production, love exists!  Why doesn’t the very existence of love frustrate our apathy towards life and force us to ask why?

How odd is it that we never stop to realize how miraculous everything is?  It’s like if some one took us in an airplane for the first time and we just sat bored through the entire flight, instead of being on the edge of our seat, looking out the window at the buildings and people below, in a state of total marvel.

Molecules, music, stars, personalities, love….. they’re all so unbelievable!  How is it that we’re so unaware and bored all of the time?  How is it that we don’t stop and become overwhelmed at how little we know, and how much understanding it all seems forever beyond our grasp?  How can we not sense that all of this somehow divinely orchestrated?  I’m starting to think that to marvel at life is the beginning of living.

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.
-Psalm 19:1-6

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