Out there, right now...

As I think I've mentioned somewhere before, I lost my faith many years ago and so the transcendent has to happen for me outside of the religious sphere.  (Wow - how pretentious is that sentence? Keep reading, it gets better.) Sometimes, it comes from doing things like standing by the sea shore, looking out at the power of the ocean, but most often it comes from looking at pictures like this one, which is from NASA's Cassini mission.

About fifteen years ago, NASA launched the Cassini probe and right now, over a billion kilometers away from where you're sitting, reading this, that little probe is taking astonishing pictures.  There are many, many other wonderful pictures on the official website, which you can find here, and I can't recommend it strongly enough. 

The news this last week has been full of tragedy, misery and horror but the thing that struck me when I looked at that picture was that this is happening, right now. Out there, literally a billion kilometers away, this strange and beautiful plant orbits in silence. It is utterly indifferent to everything that happens here; it will continue to orbit after you and I are long dead, unchanged in any way by our living or our passing.  It exists wholly independent of anything that happens on this faraway, insignificant planet.

I find that both terrifying and strangely comforting.  Oh look - I got all pretentious again at the end.