The Beating Heart of the Universe

The universe is enormous:

A vastness uncontainable

By our limited human minds.

A scope that’s wholly alien

To our experience on Earth.

Hints of infinity exist

In ‘er receding horizons,

The majesty of waterfalls,

And in the shadowed mountains high.

Seen even in minute wonders:

The perfection of drops of dew,

Unfolding of a flower nigh,

The bubbling brooks of children’s laughs.

The sheer volume of the cosmos

Can be grasped but tenuously

Within image and abstraction.

More even than Earthly marvels,

The universe shouts our smallness.

Some interpret this humbling

As indicating meaning’s lack.

In the story of the whole world

We’re just a blip, a mere footnote,

Included but irrelevant

And yet this inequality

Is based just on material,

Accounts not for the weight of life.

The op’ning up of added soul –

To sense, to want, to move and love –

Gives purpose to direction here,

To give results not just a “why”

But also reason, a “what for?”

The presence of our personhood

Grants density to this pocket

Within the depth and breadth of space

There’s more import in a fetus,

Nestled within her mother’s womb,

Then in the whole of Jupiter.

When all reality’s measured

The glory of this planet Earth

Outweighs the volume of the rest.

Perhaps inverting the image.

But lest we stoop our eyes e’er in,

Discard the heav’ns in vast array,

We ought to stop and consider:

What is the point of all the rest

Of this extensive universe?

As metaphysical center,

Perhaps we are creation’s heart,

Pumping awe and meaning, not blood,

Throughout the cosmos as a whole.

Using our receptivity

And our drive to exploration,

We fulfill being’s innate desire

When we listen and respond to

The communication of all

The rest of this great creation.

We infuse the world with meaning,

Unfold intelligibility,

Scattering the pearls of wisdom

Across the vaults of the heavens,

To shine amidst the jewels of stars.

Our expression of gratitude

For the gift that is creation

Is to connect all of the dots

Life’s author left for us to find

So that we can both see and share

The beauty of concealed image.

So we ask again: what’s the point

Of the rest of the universe?

That it is all full of wonder.