37. Affections of the Master III
My Lord chose to make me!
He chose to make me!
He chose to make me!
In His never-ending Plan,
In His Sovereign Independent Judgment
From His Immeasurable Ocean of Choices,
From His Boundless Horizons of Possibilities,
He ultimately chose to make me!
And He chose to make you!
Happy Birthday to me!
And Happy Birthday to you!
I love Bill Bryson's writing. I have been reading his books, introduced to me by my friend King when he was working in Geneva I believe. He gave me an audio book of Bill Bryson's extremely hilarious work entitled "A Walk in the Woods". Since then I have been reading almost all of Bryson's writing, about his childhood days in Des Moines, Iowa, to his travel to England, then Europe before finally landing himself back in the US. In between he has had the time to write about Australia, science, the origin of words and invention in America as well as a short book about Shakespeare. His latest book is entitled At Home - A Short History of Private Life, which I am still reading, is like all of his books, very well research, thoughtful and funny.
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Bill doesn't believe in the existence of God. Because in his award-winning book entitled A Short History of Nearly Everything, his writing suggests so. In one particular chapter he wrote about the mind-blowing super-computer-brain breaking odds of you coming into existence. The fact that, just for one little variable in the flowing momentum of history and evolution, you and I, not to mention Moses the Cat, in fact all of humanity would probably not be in existence. No George Bush. No Lady Gaga. No Obama. He found this idea fascinating. I do too. But from here our common ground shifts.
The trillion trillion trillion trillion odds of you and I being created serves to prove to Bill the wonderfully amazing improbability of evolution and how lucky we all are to even be born. My belief, is just to change the last bit and say how blessed we are to even be created by God. Other than that, his way of thinking, his weakness and wit, his gentle humanity and thoughtful appraisal of our history is the sort of thinking and ideal that I myself would be proud to mirror as a writer and as a man.
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So I have no interest to change Bill. I just thought it would be fair to tell you who inspired the recording of the above prose, written three years ago, also in the holy month of Ramadhan. Bill through his books has educated me, caused me to laugh and chuckle alone in a crowd, and made me fall in love with many, many things and many, many people I would not have known, had he not written about them. So I owe him quite a bit.
Have a wonderful Thursday. Just one more day, sunshine... then the weekend!
wa min Allah at-taufiq.
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