on an island in the Marianas I stood on the mountaintop and had a cloudless view 360 degrees of the Pacific. I could then imagine the earth curving beyond the horizon and size up how astoundingly massive this planet is. It is one thing to know intellectually that the Earth is enormous and another to experience it as reality. My body sensed a flash of strangeness like it was supposed to be in free fall acceleration, yet here everything was just floating. It was a religious experience. There was no hallelujah, no euphoria, no rapture, no greatness. Just pure calm truth. Meanwhile religion tries to hook us on drama.
