For I Only Wanted To See

In the first grade, I created the Planet Club. I couldn’t tell you all of the details now that a good twenty years or so have passed, but slivers of memories remain. I invited my best friends first, then most of the class ended up joining.

Every day, we would meet at recess to discuss the sciences, but we were no older than 6 or 7, so our understanding was…not very deep. Half of the time we were probably extremely incorrect. We had barely studied gravity by this point.

I printed pictures of each planet and studied them every day. I brought information from the books in our elementary school library to devour over my chocolate milk and cheese pizza.

One day, I arrived in the library and the kids had decided that science was boring and so was I. They kicked me out of my own club. My tiny pride was hurt, but the curiosity never waned.

I came home and proceeded to tape the latest pictures of each planet on the sides of the washing machine in the front hall of our country home. The washing machine felt natural to my inquisitive young mind, but I couldn’t rationalize how that could be the best space now that I am an adult. Studying about the Kepler telescope, I was fascinated by its discoveries.

I don’t remember much beyond these bits and pieces except for the fluttering my heart would feel upon seeing the cosmos. When the vast universe made sense all the way down to the most minute of details, I was enraptured. Even things that seemed like accidents in the universe had meaning and their pre-destined places.

Studying the sciences lead me to questions about who had created the cosmos and why. The more that I learned, the more I was convinced that the Divine must exist.