I asked my wife last night if she'd ever seen a UFO. We've known each other for almost twenty years, and this was a subject that had simply never come up. I asked her because I'd had lunch with a friend earlier in the day, and he/she (to protect the innocent) told me of not one, but three observances they'd had of utterly unidentifiable objects, hovering and flying and disappearing into the twilight.

Three!

I felt cheated! I feel cheated now! I worked for an airline for over twenty years, working outside a great deal of that time, working at night, on the tarmac of an airport, next door to a U.S. Air Force base, next door to a Department of Energy national laboratory that is surely one of the two or three most secretive places on Earth. On more than one occasion I had to wipe my eyes and look again at sightings I couldn't quite explain to myself, only to eventually put them out of my mind, and explain them away as 'identifiable.' They HAD to be. Just because I didn't know for sure what the heck it was I'd just seen didn't mean I'd seen anything to get worked up about. Right?

My friend and I talked at lunch about the other galaxies. Smart men and women know there are other galaxies. They know of other universes, perhaps. They just don't know if God has created living, breathing intelligent creatures anywhere but here. (Don't laugh! I know how funny it sounds to insinuate that God has created intelligent creatures here.)

We, the intelligencia of Earth, have learned to make fire and the wheel. We drew, not so long ago, pictures on the walls of our caves to express ourselves and expound on the stories of the great beasts we'd killed in the woodlands, while looking for food to bring back to camp. We've learned to grow crops, and then spent a few thousand years 'unlearning' how to grow them. We've walked with God in a garden of great delight and wonder, and then straightaway walked out on Him, hiding behind fig bushes, suddenly aware we weren't 'wearing' anything.

Eventually, we'd roam the Earth for several thousand years, riding donkeys and horses, and finally figuring out how to attach one of those 'wheeled' carts to a beast to pull several of us around all at once.

Then came the 20th century. A huge spurt of genius came shooting forth, almost out of nowhere.

We learned to fly. Eventually all the way to our moon. Then we stopped doing that, and concentrated much of that energy and learning on our everyday lives. Tang and Velcro and personal computering and PCV plumbing and all kinds of things that allow us to call ourselves 'modern man.' We are no longer 'ancient.' We are 'modern.'

We entertain ourselves with stilted talent shows and we heap praise and worship on mildly talented people and even higher praise and worship on extraordinarily untalented people. We celebrate people. Everyone is a 'celebrity,' and dammit, they deserve it.

Occasionally, a story-teller comes along; a Mark Twain or a Charles Dickens or a Harper Lee or a John Steinbeck or a C.S. Lewis or a Cormac McCarthy or a Stephen King or a Vince Gilligan. We do still 'think,' occasionally. We still find ourselves full of bits of wonder, and a desire to return to the garden. We still 'believe' in God. Many of us, anyway. And for several thousand years, at least, we've been distilling God down to something we can understand, something we can draw on the wall of a cave. Fire, wheel, horse-drawn carriage, Velcro.

If the stories we've been told are true (and maybe they're truer than we even allow them to be) and if God really is 'love,' whether or not everything in The Word is literal or hyperbolic or mythologic or inerrant, it is fascinating to think of other worlds with created beings who've already soared through time and space and experienced Heaven's glory. For surely, if God is anywhere as big and grand and great and awesome as those of us who've surrendered ourselves to His exploration say He is, than ANYTHING  and EVERYTHING is possible. Right?

One thing I think is clear. It is our arrogance that holds us back. The one thing we've not evolved into are humble creatures, eagerly willing to have all our curiosities explored underneath the vast canopy of what we tenderly call the 'will of God.' Whatever it is we think we believe He's done here, on Earth, with us, we can be sure that He's capable of so, so, so much more, and that our brief existence serves only one purpose and one purpose alone. His pleasure. His glory.

My wife looked at me funny for a minute, thinking it strange that I would ask a question like that, after so long together. Then she told me of two obervances she's had.

Two!

What's wrong with me??? Right?