…
There are times in life when things become clear without you expecting them to. It is indeed a strange feeling to understand suddenly how big things really are, how little we really are. It is a surprise to find that your living room is an immense space, and that your body is simply a point inside of it. You can virtually hear the sound of the air swirling around the corners of a remote control, or experience the blinding darkness that a candle smoke eclipse throws across the enormity of the table it rises upon.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are sitting in the farthest upper deck corner of the largest baseball stadium you have ever been to. It is only you and the blowing wind. In the very opposite corner of the field, lying in the grass, is a grain of sand. Look across the field from your seat and try to imagine how incredibly small that grain of sand is from your position. Now imagine the billions of atoms that makeup that grain of sand. You, my friend, with relation to the size of the universe are even smaller than a single atom on that one grain of sand viewed from the farthest corner of the world’s most enormous baseball stadium. Of what possible concern are you to the universe?
I hate to say it, but there is no plan for you. There is no imaginary sky wizard sitting up in the clouds gazing down upon you. When your tiny little atom gets cancer, there is no man in the upper deck that takes a tiny little syringe and casts an itsy bitsy little magic spell on it to heal your even teeny tinier cells. When your little atom prays before a basketball game, there is no giant man that reaches down from the cosmos to guide your tiny little basketball into the tiny little rim. There are no guardian angels with bird wings, no demons with swords, and no god that smells your lamb sacrifices. There is no god bigger than the enormous universe that would turn himself into an atom-size man and try to impress the world by changing a tiny little jar of wine into a tiny little jar of water. A jar of water!!!! The creator of the universe, so enormous that countless planets are still smaller in size than a grain of sand, made himself that small only to try and impress us with a goddamn jar of water!!!
A god that oversees a universe in which you are smaller than the smallest atom on the smallest grain of sand would not waste his time parting oceans on a planet smaller than an atom, killing men for ejaculating on the floor, telling you to cut open the neck of a pigeon to drain the blood out in order to atone for your sins, or anything so ridiculous. He would pulse and the universe would forget about your speck of a planet. He would not look down from his upper deck seat, point to your invisible little atom and order you to strap on a tiny little belt to go blow up people who think differently from you. A cracker does not symbolize a god larger than the universe. Dipping your baby in water is not visible to someone so enormous. Does a universal god really care that you cut off the foreskin of your child? Employing a tiny little angel with a flaming sword to guard a garden that is invisible even from the next planet over makes no sense. Having a person smaller than atom thrown into a lake of fire because that person didn’t properly repent for a talking snake smaller than an atom tricking a woman and a man smaller than an atom into eating an apple smaller than atom makes no sense in any possible reality anywhere. If this is your god, he is the lamest possible god I could ever imagine. He blinks and a universe comes into existence. He shrugs and galaxies sputter out. He yawns and a billion planets cease to exist. And yet, he somehow manages to find time to come down to little ol’ earth and get flown around by the freaking devil.
You know what’s real? Not this tripe. What’s real is the curled fingers of your child across your neck as you carry his sleeping form to bed. What’s real is you and the person you love, pressed face to face with eyes open and soft breath on each other’s skin. What’s real is you standing by the bed of your spouse as they take their last breaths, knowing that of all the things in this enormous universe, the only thing that matters are the unspoken words of eternal love that move between you.
The miracles of the universe are not found in the Bible or the Koran, filled with their ridiculous nonsense of flying horses and Samson hair. Real miracles are things like two people—smaller than atoms on atoms in the face of the universe—bumping into each and knowing that they are meant to be together. Get out of church and go live your life. When your candle blows out, there is no heaven of atomic sized angels playing atomic sized banjos and trumpets. You return to the earth to be forgotten by the universe. If you live your life right, however, you will not be forgotten by those whom you loved, and those who loved you.
