A lovely view
I was visiting my sister in Washington, D.C., this weekend for her college graduation. (Congratulations, Rach!) After a minor travel snafu delayed my return to Seattle by a day, I managed to get on a flight that returned me home earlier this evening.
The view from the plane was magnificent--beautiful, white, billowy clouds stretched out to the horizon. How lucky I am to be alive in this century! This view, this voyage above the clouds, was unknown and unthinkable barely more than a century before. How lucky I am to be alive now, in this most recent and fleeting time; for if I had been born into any other period of history, I would not be able to marvel at a view even the birds would envy.
We have flown for barely a century. It has been less than half that time since we sent men to walk on the moon. And less than a quarter of a century since we sent machines--designed, built, launched, and monitored by us--away from our own planet and into the vast cosmos, beyond even our own solar system.
And in all of this I am incredulous that people might think that science somehow diminishes their faith, or that technology somehow cheapens their spirituality. How is it anything less than poetic, anything less than beautiful, to know that we can soar above the clouds? That we can touch another planet? That we might reach beyond our corner of the universe? It has been less than a century since we discovered Pluto and barely a decade since we first discovered planets orbiting a star other than our own.
How can any endeavor which reveals such grand and intricate beauty in our universe do anything other than amplify our sense of wonder? The questions we answer through science only ever lead us to more questions. Why should any designer, any creator, wish to impede such illuminating exploration? Why should any faith hold in contempt any meager truths that we learn, when those truths only deepen our sense of awe, our sense of wonder, at the intricate nature of our universe? The sense of wonder that comes from faith and the sense of wonder that comes from science are the same wonder for the same universe.
Anyhow, the clouds were really beautiful today.