LIFE IS AMAZING

My freshman year in high school I had to dissect a fetal pig.  Part way through sewing little identifier labels on to each pickled muscle, my lab partner Liz confronted me with how couldn’t I believe in God after the experience of seeing all these intricate parts fit together perfectly to make a (once) living breathing being?  Liz and I weren’t particularly close so I guess my skepticism was right there on the surface at that point.  As a kid, I lumped God together with Santa Claus, the Easter bunny and the tooth fairy.  As I realized there was no way Santa Claus was fitting down our 10” diameter stove pipe -- and why were there scraps of fabric in my mom’s sewing basket just like my new Christmas bathrobe…?  And on Easter – why did our family get goose eggs and handmade baskets but our friends got Cadbury eggs and Peeps?  He shops around for different kids? Why were the letters from the tooth fairy always in my mom’s handwriting?  And then I managed to secretly pull a tooth and lo and behold no fairy showed (something about the parents having to pass the info along to said fairy)… stuff just wasn’t adding up.  Since Santa and the bunny were linked to religious holidays the sham(s) quickly infected the God topic for me.  Not believing became like a badge of honor for having exposed the fraud.  Since then, I have wished there had been a little more room for fantasy in my childhood, but I’m not sure how it could have been different.  For better or worse, my over-thinking started at an early age. 

So, formal opinions on God aside, LIFE IS AMAZING.  And less worrying about the facts and more absorbing the amazing-ness is very good.  This week, our small garden is growing at a practically perceptible-to-the-naked-eye rate and M herself is so full of love and light -- it's glorious.  I'm also thinking about how great it is to have these feelings without having to sew labels on a fetal pig.

violets in Midtown