Thanksgiving

It's so much more than a holliday

photo by Pixabay

Thanksgiving is coming up.  I thought I would get a head start.  Not, not the turkey and gravy, but the thanks. Well, yes, I’m thankful for turkey and gravy.

But I’m thankful for everything else. Everything, every day. We live in a universe that scientists understand to a great degree, yet they can’t explain how it got here, where it came from. We live in a world teaming with life, the only one we know of anywhere in the universe.

Scientists understand how life works on this planet to a great degree, yet they can’t explain how it came about. I often wonder, what caused some inanimate matter to develop a will? That’s what life is, isn’t it?  The will. A rock just stays there, until nature erodes it or otherwise destroys it. Life builds itself, defies nature. Why would some minute bit of matter, with no brain, with almost no awareness, work at reforming itself into a being, in defiance of the laws of entropy? 

Something’s going on here. Something is making things happen that aren’t in accordance with our laws of science. Our culture today has given itself over to science and technology, me as much as anyone. But I can’t help thinking that science is missing some of the essential points.  These days, so many people feel so much angst. All the research, all the planning, all the efficiency of production, and what do we have to show for it? Taller buildings.  Electric cars. Fast communications.  These are all good and desirable, but are we any happier today than people were a thousand years ago?  More comfortable, yes.  But happier?

Life has always struggled to survive on earth.  Why make the effort? Why does an amoeba bother?  Life loses battles with nature, yet it never gives up.  Life seeks to flourish anywhere it can, from the hottest to the coldest places, from the driest to the wettest. Yet, we feel like life is a struggle, just dealing with a job, or a neighbor, or a political party. I think we’re spoiled.  We don’t often lose our children to disease. We do not routinely get killed by predators. Prefvious beings, including ancient man, have never presumed any inherent right to survival, but we now dare to presume exactly that. We have granted ourselves all kinds of rights that nature never intended to grant to us. We think we have a right to a long life, and an easy life.

I am thankful. I Am thankful that we exist at all. I marvel at a universe that is immensely complex and very simple, at the same time. I am thankful for the earth.  It supports life, we know not why. I am thankful for the life force that causes lifeless matter to rearrange itself into living things.

We shouldn’t be here.  The odds are stacked way against us. Something, somebody, wants it to happen.  I don’t need to know exactly why.  It doesn’t need a name, but I call it God.

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