Life is plenty good without God

"This is good enough, plenty good enough."

That's what went through my mind as I was digesting one of those magical experiences which many people attribute to God. Good enough meant no need to add anything divine to what nature has wrought.

I was walking along Maui's Kapalua Coastal Trail late in the day. No one else was around as I moved off a paved path onto a dirt stretch of the trail that wound across a rocky volcanic headland.

The sun was setting in front of me. The sea was calm. Until I saw a tell-tale spray of water. Whale! It was late in the year to spot one. February and March are peak whale-watching months, though they're around until mid-May or so.

Then the whale breached, leaping part way out of the water, coming down with a big splash. Just once. I didn't see it again.

Yeah, it was magical. There I was, all by myself, companioned only with the vista before me, bird sounds, and the wind whistling by.

I was alone. The whale seemed to be alone. The barely visible trail meandered toward cliffs which drop into the sea. I was struck by how life is made of moments which lead... nowhere.

Nowhere we can tell, I mean. Life is full of surprises.

Whales unexpectedly jump out of the ocean. What's around the next bend of time is impossible to completely predict -- including when our personal string of moments will reach their end.

Yet, that's enough. Plenty good enough.

To be able to experience whatever we have, are, and will. There's nothing special about any particular moment; they all are unmiraculous miracles. Wherever you are right now is as full of unmagical magic as my Maui whale-sighting moment was.

As I often do, I said "thank you" before turning away from the channel between Maui and Molokai. Those words weren't addressed to God. Or to the whale. Or to anybody/anything in particular. They were aimed at Everything. The cosmos. Existence. My capacity for awareness.


Returning to Napili Bay, I saw that one of those marvelous Maui weddings was taking place on a beachfront rock. This couple clearly was enjoying a special moment. Aside from some tourist'y onlookers like me, the only people with them were a guitar-strumming minister and two photographer-types.

Simple is good. Natural is good. These newlyweds had Napili Bay for their "church." It looked plenty good enough to me.

(Today Mike Williams shared an interesting comment on another post about his own almost-miraculous nature moment. His involved a hawk that looked like an eagle, not a whale. Check it out.)

Comments

[George]

yip them hawaiin islands look pretty amazing, like paradise on earth, came straight out of the sea yesterday in geological terms - the home of surfing, the most iolated, the most volcanically active and the wettest place on earth i believe.

[Blogger Brian]

Just came across these thoughts from J. Krishnamurti in "Freedom From the Known." Resonates with the sort of feeling I related in this post.
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Say you are walking by yourself or with somebody and you have stopped talking. You are surrounded by nature and there is no dog barking, no noise of a car passing or even the flutter of a bird.

You are completely silent and nature around you is also wholly silent. In that state of silence both in the observer and the observed -- when the observer is not translating what he observes into thought -- in that silence there is a different quality of beauty.

There is neither nature nor the observer. There is a state of mind wholly, completely, alone; it is alone -- not in isolation -- alone in stillness and that stillness is beauty.