COMMENTARY: The Ultimate Selfie

Compliments of NASA and the robotic spacecraft Cassini-Huygens, we are treated to a most provocative photograph: Earth, seen through the rings of Saturn, spinning about 870 million miles away.

Ponder this image and listen to the thoughts that arise in your mind. Do you hear questions? Or, answers? 

Do these thoughts comfort you? Or, challenge you?

The questions that come to my mind when contemplating this photo -- and knowing that this image, in all of its magnificence, still only captures one infinitesimal speck of a vast, expanding universe -- are:  Why is there something and not just nothing? Why is there anything at all?

And these questions lead to others: Can a writer succeed where scientists, philosophers and theologians still struggle? Can a writer write well enough to help us truly make sense of our very existence?

I believe the best writers can and do. Is this a form of faith? Perhaps. 

Either way, I offer a closing wish: In the words of the old proverb, May your stories be written upon the stars -- and remembered forever.