"Daddy, What Do You Think About A Lot?"

It's 9:30 on a spectacular beautiful September evening, out on the dock on the river, under a blanket of stars, with the slightest cool breeze coming to us over the water, and this is what my 9 year-old daughter asks me. We'd been talking the start of school, cool songs, all kinds of fishing stories and tricks, and she comes up with this one. Man, this is what parenting is all about.

So I ask back to her the exact same question, since it's clear she's thinking a lot, and I think she wants to tell me something as well. She tells me about wondering about how many stars there are, how big the galaxy is ("at least a thousand miles!"), and how does the river flow into the sea when it doesn't seem to be moving. I want to hear her just think, to think through things and explore ideas and concepts, but she comes back to me with her original question. I treasure the moment: she really wants to hear what I think.

I pause, and I plunge in with the Biggest Question of Them All: Is God really out there? I think about this, Princess, and yeah, I think about it a lot. My "God Isn't" post, still in draft as of this writing, explores this in as much depth as I can muster. It's mostly questions, questions for which there have never been satisfying or direct answers. Overall, I wonder why it is, if there truly is a God, why he doesn't make himself clearly and unequivocally known to me, to us? I wonder why God, if he really is up there/out there watching over all of us, allows tsunamis and hurricanes and cancer and serial murderers and child molesters and rape and birth defects and Nazis and genocide and torture and adultery and incest and pain. If this is the world God made just for us, why is it so painful and ugly and dangerous and coarse and random and unwelcoming? If God is all-knowing and all-loving and is our father and protector, why are children kidnapped and raped and murdered? Why do children die in the trunk of a car or a refrigerator on a hot day? Why is there muscular dystrophy and cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis and sickle cell anemia? If God is watching over us, why do good people die in horrible ways far before their time?

And at the center of it all is the question, why am I here? This assumes purpose, that any of us are actually here for a reason. The irony is that there is no reason. There never has been a reason, and there never will be, other than that we are organic organisms with a built-in urge to reproduce. We are tiny, insignificant, miniscule, nano-specks on the face of all of physical reality, one we can't even define or bound yet, so the screaming human need for context and scope and above all relevance creates the need for God. God is the reaction to the inevitability of death, for the sudden and irreversible end to our fragile, chemical existence. Religion and God and all of the rest is a massively complex and centuries-old act of denial, reacting to the fear of death and the loss of all meaning and relevance to our existence on the planet. It is a vain reaction, to assume that we are so special, and so unique that we absolutely can't just end, that we have to leave something behind, that something of ME must live on!

And I just don't believe that. We are tiny and insignificant in a universe so incredibly hostile that we are only now beginning to come to grips with how lucky we all are. Our existence is a miracle of odds, not a miracle of divine intelligence or interference. Our entire existence can and most likely will end in a blinding flash in the blink of the cosmic eye, next week, next year, or 17 billion years in the future. Who knows? Well, certainly not us, that's for sure. We are small and alone, and that is the reality. It's sobering and painful, but that's the real truth. I've accepted it, and that's that. When I die, that will be that, no more. It's the same with everyone that's ever lived--there is no way out. So what does that leave me to hold on to? It leaves me my wife and my two children, my parents, and the friends I allow close to me. That's all there is, because that is the only place most of us will live on when we're done. Live now, because death is coming, sooner or later. Do not live for a life-after future, because there is none. And to me, a life lived in anticipation of a life after, is a life completely and totally wasted, a life thrown away for a hollow promise, for a lie. You live for a few decades, then you're done, and that's all there is, literally. Maximize it while you're here, because that's all you'll ever get.

These are some of the questions and thoughts I shared with my daughter this evening. She listened very well, and asked a lot of questions. I looked up to the stars and asked God to come on down and show himself to me and my daughter, to help us through the dilemma and the questions, to give us direction and meaning and relevance, and to give us the good word on Life. Nothing but the breeze across the river and the lapping of the tide on the dock. No lights, no noises, no flashes, nothing that could be interpreted in the slightest way as a sign from the Big Guy Up There, nothing at all. But of course.

I finished by telling my lovely daughter, who'll be 10 in March that her spiritual life is her own, and that she has to choose her own path. What is important is for everyone to make their own choices, and make their own way in life. Be yourself, and you can be anything you want. Be true to yourself, and make yourself happy. And do not tolerate for one second anyone who cannot accept you as you are, or who wants to change you into someone else. Do not trust them, and get as far away from them as possible.

And up to the house we went for a late dessert of grandma's fantastic blackberry dumplings, six catfish later.