sometimes i look out at the night sky and am amazed by the number of stars i can see, even here in light-polluted southern california. for each star in my field of vision (in my neighborhood probably less than 500 even on a good dark night), i know that there at least 400 million other brilliant, burning balls of gas just in our very own milky way galaxy (and this is a conservative estimate). there are at least 80 billion galaxies in the universe. this is not terribly scientific, but i estimate that there are more than 1600 billion billion stars in the universe, give or take a few hundred billion billion.

whoa.

some of us have a hard time believing that someone/something created all of this. it is even more mind-boggling to me that someone who was capable of creating the vast universe would consider the little sometimes intelligent creatures on this earth to be his/her/its crowning achievement, and that that same somebody would care about how well one of those billions of people does on his school exam the next day. in spite of my reasoning, some part of me hopes that someone is there to care.

i wonder if we created god as a self defense mechanism, to stave off despair.

i open the windows of my imagination to peek on the grandeur of creation on occasion, but my universe is much smaller. it consists of the places i’ve visited and the people i’ve met, in person and through movies, books, the web, and my imagination. we are all gods and demons here. we all have the power to create, destroy, to save or damn in our own little worlds. sometimes i am a demon, and i wreak havoc on those i love and set in motion personal catastrophes. but i believe that each of us can be saviors. we can work miracles: we can turn tears into laughter, we can reach out to the those suffering from leprosy of the heart, we can banish disease and hunger, and we can command the light to appear where there was only darkness and despair. we each hang on crosses, sometimes of our own making. we can bury our lesser selves and emerge from the tomb triumphant, ascendant, exalted::