“But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakeable faith.” — Vincent van Gogh, Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh

There are miracles dancing just outside the door in the morning drizzle. I know this to be true because I encountered them when I walked outside to reassure the pup that it was indeed okay to go out for relief wherever she saw fit, surely burning some spot in the once-immaculate lawn. While you’re at it (I suggested), scratch a new hole somewhere, just to see what’s under the surface. She knows I’ll fill it in behind her. Miracles aren’t simply the Aurora Borealis dancing above my head just last week, miracles are in the everyday act of living. We must love it all, for our time with it is short. And we too are miracles—one day dancing with the sky like the northern lights, the next a memory. So do dance friend.

I often shake my head at the desperate resolve to know such things as God. The answer isn’t in the ritual, the answer is felt within when we connect ourselves with the universe around us. It’s the crab apple laying a carpet of blossoms at her feet in the rain. It’s the bee’s frenzied roll in the flowers that it may carry its load back to the hive. And yes, it’s in an adolescent pup expressing her boundless energy with muddy paws. We must love many things to know the eternal.

I’m beginning to understand eternity. It’s folly to believe we’ll ever truly know in our brief dance, but the clues are all around us, hiding in plain sight. The very word universe is derived from the Latin, universus: “combined into one”. Eternity is found in this fragile moment: as a carpet of blossoms or in the mind of a rambling writer figuring things out day-by-day. We may write a verse, as Walt Whitman once suggested. Yes, it’s been right there all along, waiting for us to make the most of the time.