Sunday Thoughts: What's the Chance?

It snowed last night for the first time this season. I could tell it was snowing because the rain stopped and, as I lay on the couch watching a movie, it became very still and very quiet outside. I sat up and turned on the porch light. Huge flakes drifted down past the window in the light. As it is every time in a heavy snowfall, the massive flakes moving diagonally across the deck outside became almost surreal and obscured the railing a mere 15 feet away. I fell asleep on the couch with a blanket tucked over me, watching the slanting flakes dancing in the light.

In the morning, the sun appeared and everything became diamond sharp. Only about an inch of snow had fallen and, with the sun, exposed patches of snow began to melt. I watched steam waft from my trees and fence as the sun warmed their surfaces.

In keeping with my continued resolution to lose more weight, I put on a sweatshirt, hat, fleece gloves and hooked up the iPod Nano. The day was a miracle in bright colored contrasts, the snow melting on the side of the road, pines steaming in the sun. Running (more like a slow chug) back up the hill, my mind wandered.

What was the chance? Why me, why here, why now? What massive, more than massive, combination of elemental and bizarre chemical and biological circumstances placed my living, breathing sack of tissue here on this ball of rock, so that I could breath air, be carbon based, have a fiery star warming my back and positioned so perfectly that, in this season, though cold, it wasn't sufficiently cold to freeze me in place once outside?

How was it that I could intake a gas that sustained my life, turned the skies blue, chased clouds overhead? How was it that these mountains were formed, as in the ridgeside I was now climbing? How was it that I could see such beauty in the surrounding fir trees, the patches of snow in adjacent fields, how was it that I had eyes to appreciate this at all?

I heard a sound and looked above in time to see the contrail from a jet cross through a slot in the tree canopy. What was beyond the blue? Black? The airless depths of space? Of course. The depths of infinity.

Infinity, I then thought; what was that? Could I conceive of infinity? My arms pumping and my breathing regular, listening to Three Man Army. What was infinity? I let my mind try to take me to the infinite.

It tried.

And failed.

It kept going and going and I traveled through star systems, galaxies and then wearied of the thought. Had I come across a wall? If there was such a wall in space, what was beyond that? Was it like the falling tree in the forest? Did the universe end at a wall and only go beyond when I thought of going there? No, of course not. How arrogant of me.

So then where was I placed? Was I the center of the universe? The earth? Where was I in relationship to infinity? Where was my place in the scheme of the infinite?

My mind clanked back to the reality of my labored breathing; my run was coming to its end. I crossed the tracks in front of a stalled train some 100 yards west of me. Its diesels thrummed at idle and I could feel the vibration in my lungs. Not far to go.

What about my end, I wondered? What would my end be like? Will I fear it or will my life be such that I welcome it, or will I simply be indifferent? I can't imagine indifference. I certainly fear the end now. I still have things I want to do, places I want to see.

I watched the pines drip water from their branches onto the ground and the road before me. Water ran quickly in little rivers on either side of the road.

I came to my gate and stopped the timer. My time was a little longer than normal. My mind had wandered and evidently so had my time.

I looked once again up to the sky as clouds began to skirt about the exposed, snow-decked ridge to the north. How wonderful that I should see this. I could almost smell the clouds.

Here I was, living, breathing. Seeing wondrous sights. Pines and mountains and snow and clouds and the most vivid color blue you can imagine.

What was the chance of my being here, able to have this experience?

How miraculous.