An Oceanic Feeling

I went to the soccer fields at Zilker Park today with my dog, Riker. After a brief and meandering walk, we settled down on top of the Rock Island, my back against a scraggly tree, the dog reclining to my right like a lion.

I read the chapter in The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins, called "Why God Almost Certainly Does Not Exist".

I read two chapters in my cosmology textbook about the formation of stars and the formation of galaxies.

I read a chapter in Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, by Rob Bell, called "True" about sensing holiness in great moments, ordinary moments, and tragic moments. Rob Bell tells the story of being speechless when he held his newborn son in his hands. He also tells the story of sensing holiness while holding the dead body of a friend's one-day-old child.

Two weeks ago, I went to Zilker to read and the grass was all dead, burnt by thousands of hot bodies during the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and the fields were covered with rows of trash bags, filled with plastic bottles, cups, and debris. Today, however, the grass was beautifully green and lush.

When the wind stilled, a little sweat would trickle down my nose, but the wind was rarely still; a gentle cool breeze slipped across the surface of the rock and between the trees, rustling branches and sending leaves to the ground around me.

Thousands of birds and locusts screamed from everywhere around me. Dogs barked sometimes, and if they got too near, Riker would bark back. I decided to leave my iPod off so that I would not miss the music.

Rightness. Holiness. A sense of something bigger than me, greater than me, flowing around me, part of me but... apart from me. Holiness. I cried a little while reading Rob Bell just at identifying so immediately with the immensity in his stories.

Once the sun started to sink below the horizon, I packed up my books, and Riker and I strolled back across the fields to my car. My air conditioner is broken, so I never go anywhere without all my windows rolled down.

The radio is broken in my car, so I usually put on my iPod, but I decided today to keep listening to the other music around me. My car makes an almost imperceptible, rhythmic squeaking noise when I'm not braking that makes me a little nervous, whi-whi-whi-whi!

Austin is growing these days, so the sounds of construction are almost all-pervading. I sat at a stoplight and listened to the sound of metal-pounding-metal. Riker sat in the passenger seat with his head out the window and his tongue hanging from his mouth, smiling.

At some point, I put my headphones on and listened to Joanna Newsome tentatively singing, "Joy! / Landlocked / In bodies that don't keep / Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being / Until we don't be," over the majesty of a full orchestra.

The windows were still open, and when I pulled into a neighborhood, I passed a sprinkler in someone's front lawn. It made a sound, one of a trillion sounds that cannot be reproduced in words, but that every author wants to capture, because the sound is just. so. right. Ra-ta-ta-ta-tat! Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-tat!

I have read the arguments Richard Dawkins calls his most convincing. I have read Freud arguing against God. And yet, as I crawled out of my car, and whistled to Riker, who jumped out and ran a little circle around me, I thought, "Do some people just not have this feeling? This oceanic feeling of rightness?"

It has been a good day.