Stuff of earth?

I suppose, to most sensible, modern, scientific people I am rather nonsensical, fantastical, and perhaps a wee bit mad.  You see, I believe in fairies, unicorns, and dragons.  I believe the ancients when they say the forests teemed with beasts unknown and harbored pixie folk with strange ways and powers.  This is not to say that I think the biologists or paleontologists will one day discover a small breeding population of unicorns deep in the jungles of Ecuador or a lost tribe of elves somewhere in Asia, but that there is something that sparks such whimsy and wonder within each human soul and we each must give vent to it in one way or another, or we will go mad.  Every culture has myths, legends, and stories that hearken back to this ancient yearning, this tendency much ignored by modern folk which is still satisfied by our addiction to anime, comic books, movies, video games, and so forth.  The love of magic and story will never die until the whole race shall perish from the earth. 

I know there is something in the air this time of year that saps my objectivity and sensibility, whether it is the warmth or the teeming abundance of life after months under the glacier, I do not know for certain, but it always awakes some childish delight in merely being alive.  But there is also something MORE.  I understand how the fairy tales came to be, I know the stories are true.  The strangest part is, that I am a creature of science!  I spent eight years studying biology and the related sciences.  In theory, I know how all the pieces fit together and work and make life go, but I have not yet learned what makes life be.  What of joy, beauty, wonder, curiosity, music, the smell of roses, and childish laughter?  I cannot comprehend how a mere chemical mass operating according to physical laws can find value in any of it.  How does sunlight shining through basswood leaves quicken the soul and inspire the poets?  These must be something more than mere physical phenomenon.

It is the unseen things, the unmeasurable things, the economically pointless things, that make life worth the living.  The scientists think me mad, but few are the poets among them.  Some will call it religion or spirituality or the life force or creativity or the human spirit while some will call it nonsense, but in every nation, tribe, and tongue, there is a word for it.  It is that feeling that life is good and beautiful and worth living even when there is trial, sorrow, confusion, frustration, and hurt lurking all about us.  It is the hope beyond all despair that causes us to rise from the ashes and continue on.  It is the stars shining above Mordor and Sam Gamgee lifting his eyes amidst their perilous quest to say that there is beauty beyond the reach of all evil.  It is the cry from the cross, when evil felt itself fully triumphant that announced in agonized breath, "it is finished."  It is the thing in each of us that renders us 'pilgrims and sojourners' in this mortal sphere.

C. S. Lewis's Screwtape labeled us amphibians, creatures dwelling in both the spiritual and physical realms.  Modern man thinks himself merely a physical creature, much neglecting his spirit to the detriment of himself, his society, and all of humanity.  Beauty is the food of the soul, virtue is the exercise and preservation thereof.  Those little moments in life that quicken our spirits, give us a sense of innate wonder or joy, and remind us that we are spiritual creatures are little glimpses of Heaven, breathes from the very throne of God.  And science still cannot explain them, except perhaps as evolutionary 'mistakes.'  But just because we cannot measure it, it makes them no less true.