Big Dots, Little Dots

To a worm in horseradish the world is horseradish.
~ Yiddish Proverb

Sometimes I wonder if there really is a dog.
~ The Agnostic Flea

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

~ Psalm 8

Recently I've been pondering big dots and little dots.  What started this pondering was an observation in a blog by Seth Godin in which he writes, "If you were able to shrink the Earth to the size of a billiard ball, it would be the roundest sphere ever created. Hard to believe this if you live near the edge of the Grand Canyon."

Actually the "if" of Godin's statement is true when you consider our current ablility to see the earth from both outer and deep space.  The famous photo of the "blue marble" circa 1968 shows Earth as a round ball. Later photos from Voyger 1 show Earth as just another tiny dot in what we commonly call a "starry sky."  As for the Grand Canyon, compared to the entire surface of the Earth it is a tiny dot. And, when we stand on its edge we feel tiny in comparison.

This is where human consciousness and awareness comes in.  Our worlds are as large or small as we perceive them to be.   We can be like the worm or the flea above- oblivious to the vastness of Creation, or we can be like the Psalmist who dares to look beyond, wonder, and question our place in the Eternal.

As is common in the Psalms, the Psalmist immediately provides the answer to his/her own question: Yet you have made them a little lower than God...   Another way to translate this would be Yet you have made humans almost Divine.  Then reading a little further in Psalm 8 we discover it is our purpose, our job as little dots, to take care of the big dot.  Even so, we are reminded as "almost Divine" dots we are still little dots participating in Eternity.