"Dear God,
"As I mentioned, I am trying to 'just show up' and see what happens in relationship to you. I have been carrying my agnostic banner for a long time, and then I got the uncomfortable idea that maybe I wasn't so much agnostic as lazy. I hadn't drawn a dignified conclusion of nonbelief. I just couldn't be bothered to do the researched. So I am experimenting with you — hey, it's only fair. We — this world — are your experiment, aren't we? Do you have a sense of humor?
"Maybe you do. Baboons with their fire-engine asses are pretty funny. Also anteaters. Sloths. Tarantulas, if I weren't afraid of them. And perhaps me. I'm funny too: a middle-aged person belatedly thinking, Gee, maybe I'd better try doing something around this God Thing.
"The Truth is, you are confusing. It seems to me that making a violet would take a certain amount of care and attention, even tenderness. But at night, that vast swathe of stars spewed across all that black — what does that take? Perhaps a grandiose indifference? Maybe the coldness that numbers seem to imply. But maybe not to you.
"It occurs to me that in trying to know you, explore your mind — if you can be said to have such a thing — I may actually get know my own. That, perhaps, is not such a bad thing."
