Right there in front of my nose

In my quest for defining and locating the Supreme Being, I knew it was not an entity cast in the beingness of man. It is the allness of all. So what does that mean? Just what it says, it is everything everywhere.. And I am in the center of it all. This beingness is not just connected, it IS everything. The very molecules of air that circulate around and in my body, in this pen I grasp, and in the nupernova in a nebula that I have never heard of trillions of light years away. All. Unimaginably, all.

Sitting in my car with the seat kicked back, ready to nap (poco reposa in Italian) with the windows open, the cool breezes from the gulf ruffling the scruffs of hair I have managed to grow on the circumference of my head, I looked into the tangled bare limbs of the tree above, and realized that they were perfect. The bark on the tree was perfection, then it dawned on me that everything was perfection, in perfect coordination and balance with everything else.

I tried to conceive of what kind of mind that could create that leaf dancing in the breeze above my head. This is beyond belief, but it was made, it was not just grown out of some sea of ammonia. Perhaps it all evolved through some implacable force that ruled out the inferior and allowed only the winning superior to survive and reproduce, constantly squeezing out the losers, now we have the winners today but tomorrow they may be squashed in the remorseless advance of evolution toward a better leaf, tree, squirrel. But it was made ultimately by intelligence and not by accident. That would be all too improbable.

So I decided to mock up a prayer:

Oh thou great intelligence, now that I know you are there and where you are, I ask of you, what may I brace myself against to hold the line? It is so like lifting myself by my bootstraps. I know that I am responsible, ultimately, for all. And in seeking more responsibility, I am forever pushing to remove the stain within that flaws me. I now know that it is simply ethics, but how do I change me? How may I atone for my excesses and for my omissions, for my failure to act when I should have acted, for the gnawing in my loins and struggles within that must be quietened to fit this society of man, so I may do no harm, and serve others.

I am about to go to sleep, and now, after knowing you, I rest, in your arms. I am safe. I know you are only good, and will do no harm. You are my best friend. I am a mirror of you, under the mask I wear that reflects the conflict I lived before I knew that we are one.