Universe and Nature

To me nature and the Universe is everything. It is sacred, it is the source of my life and it is where I am going after my death. Whether I call it God, Goddess, of simply Nature/Universe it does not matter, it is simply divine and sacred and I am one with it. The Universe is me. I am the Universe. I appreciate everything in it, the beautiful and the not so beautiful. I respect it. Nature/Universe can be extremely harsh. Evolution is harsh, the wilderness food chain is harsh, then there are natural catastrophic events in Nature and destructive events in the Universe such as when a star explodes and goes super-nova. It just makes me more in awe of it. Who among us would survive in nature alone with nothing. To me it is very important to be close to nature. It is a choice. I lived in a big city for a while and it was horribly stifling. I do think however that cities are amazing creation of man and I do like to go there once in a while. I was driving back from the city last evening and was looking at the forest tree line and was wondering what it would feel like to stop the car and just enter the forest. The forest did not seem so inviting as in the day.

As a Pantheist I find just about everything beautiful and connected, my wife, my kids, my cats and dog, my neighbor, my house and yes even a coke can is sacred to me. Can you imagine the ingeniousness it takes to make a coke can at that price. Do you have any idea how much I would charge if I made a single coke can from scratch. No, I'm not being silly. Human inventiveness is beautiful. The Universe made it thus. I sympathize with those that can't decide whether they are atheist, UU or whatever. I feel so lucky to have found pure Pantheism because most of my life I identified God with the Universe without knowing there was a "religion" that felt like me. It is not a personal God I can pray to for favors, because it has already done everything for me.

The Universe from the big bang on was biased to produce sentient beings like us ... from the formation of stars where the atoms that make up our bodies were manufactured and released when they exploded. Our sun is also our God, it made us. Its a third generation star that made Gaia and through evolution and amazing random events, that don't seem random at all, made us humans and all the plants and animals on this wonderful planet. The sun is the direct source and maintainer of our lives.

I don't know whether it's my heart attack in February or my subsequent finding of Pantheism, but normally at this time of year I become depressed ... but not this time. I just revel the different texture that winter brings and I enjoy going outside in the cold just as much as in the summer when it is too hot. Oh, I've had some days where I felt depressed but it didn't grab and take hold of me. I quit drinking nearly three months ago and that was a big positive step. Not that I was drinking a lot but enough to cloud my days and prevent me from reading or doing other things that I enjoy. Now I take care of my body; I exercise 5 times a week and I eat properly.

As I write this I look outside my window in front of me, I see the tree line with tiny bits of snow on the branches and the beautiful blue sky interspersed with pure white clouds, and I feel ... content.