There are folks I know who might be surprised at how much I admire them. They know I do, but part of why I admire them is they will never admit what they do, or have done, is all that admirable.

People are burdened with things all the time. But while most of us would list mere inconveniences as our burdens, some carry enormous burdens they never wanted, probably never imagined, and most certainly never deserved. 

No one deserves a child with special needs or severe disabilities. No one deserves to have been raised by people that didn't know how to parent, or love. No one deserves to live longer than one of their children. And while any of these could be enough to destroy many strong individuals, some I know live with all this and more and still present the best of humanity to the world. They could blame their burdens for a bitter outlook. They could rail against God and turn inward or self destructive. But they do not. They do not blame or accuse. They observe and learn and recognize the value of everything they have, burdens and all. The most amazing of them will admit that without the burdens they might not have come to appreciate the value of every other thing.

I'm only starting to realize that these people may have the largest hearts of all of us. Not that they were born with a better or more efficient circulatory system. But they have somehow managed to take things into their hearts, the blessings and the burdens, and incorporate them all into their values. Somehow they don't split the good and bad and embrace one and reject the other. They let it all in. Their hearts must grow to encompass all of it. Growing a larger heart this way must be incomprehensibly painful. But that is how I know they are special. Because only with a heart that large can they have the power to appear so graceful to everyone around them.

I think it's too easy to assume that happy, friendly, generous people are that way because they have had fewer challenges and obstacles in their lives. But the happy, friendly, and generous people I admire most are those that remain that way, or maybe even became that way, through the burdens they have accepted into their hearts and the capacity that has given them to share their hearts with the world.

I watched a cloud this morning. I saw the entirety of its existance. From a tenuous wisp in a clear sky to a roiling ball of cotton to a fragmented hollow shell that evaporated, leaving the sky clear again. 

I have an engineering background and a pilot's license. I know a bit about meteorology. So I know that it's nothing more than some air, nearly saturated with water vapor, meeting and mixing with other air. Maybe it's cooler so the vapor condenses. Or it's dryer so the water evaporates. But the intricate interplay between the small air masses provided the most beautiful dance of light and cloud and sky. 

In minutes, the emerging whisp grew to a dense ball of white, getting tugged and stretched until, for a brief moment, I glimpsed a turtle. Her head stretched out from her shell racing with the wind past my backyard deck vantage point. But soon she was stretched beyond turtle form. What had appeared as turtle shell rolled over in the breeze to reveal a widening gap. The turtle shell quickly expanded and became a hollow egg shell. The expansion continued like the growing sphere of gas and plasma expelled from a nova. Soon the shell was nothing more than wisps of cloud evaporating back to vapor. And then it was gone. 

In a few minutes and about a half mile of drift, it appeared, grew, changed, and disappeared. And I may be the only one who knows it ever existed. 

I love that our pastor takes a few moments to stroll out to the west parking lot before services begin on Sundays. He's mentioned it in sermons. He says that he likes to check to make sure Pikes Peak is still there. If it is, them we'll be having church.

I deliver our daughter to church early, as our youth choir is the primary choir for the earliest service. I like to take the half hour before the service begins to stroll around the block. I always confirm that Pikes Peak is still there, too. And some days I notice small things. Today it was a very faint reflection off something on the summit of the peak. 

It doesn't happen all that often, but I have realized that it happens most often around the autumnal equinox, the period between late summer and early fall when the geometry of the sunrise and my typical location on these mornings allows for the morning light to stream all the way from the Sun to something shiny on the top of the peak and back to me.* It always gets my attention. I strikes me as wondrous that so many odd little factors have to come together in just the proper way to view the simple brief spectacle of a bright reflection off the peak summit.

Some of the factors are pretty simple things. The fact that it's not cloudy. The fact that the windows are clean enough to be shiny. But the fact that it happens near the start of autumn points to the scale of the geometry involved. And that scale is enormous. Solar system-sized, in fact. 

As the Earth moves about its orbit, the tilt of its axis relative to the Sun produces the seasons. It also causes the location of the sunrise to change. Half the time it rises north of east. The other half, south of east. Only around the equinoxes does it actually rise very close to the true direction of east. Somewhere in that process it rises in just the right place that its light will strike a shiny surface on the top of Pikes Peak and be reflected down to the central part of town. It wouldn't take but minute changes in the placement of any of the participating components to prevent it from happening. So every time I see that reflection I'm caught up thinking of the scale of our world and the worlds beyond it, of the complexity of it all. Mostly I'm grateful for being a part of it all, and for being fortunate enough to be able to contemplate that.

* Okay fellow astro-nerds, I get that it must also occur near the vernal equinox, too. But for whatever reason, I don't notice it as much then.

Truth is, I'm not really sure. 

I enjoy writing. Most of the time, I'm trying to formalize a thought or idea that otherwise won't gel in my head. I'm transcribing internal monologues. I don't usually think to share them. I don't think anyone else would want to read them. And they probably wouldn't understand them if they did.

But sometimes, the act of writing one of these odd essays brings forth a nugget or kernel of an idea that might be worth exploring. Sometimes I start over on that topic. Sometimes I let them lie. Sometimes I don't even recognize them. But every now and then, I write something that might be interesting to someone else. 

It doesn't happen often, but now, when and if it does, I think I'll put them here. But don't hold your breath till then.