If you get air sick or nervous when you fly, you might not want to think about the incredible journey you are on right now.  Imagine earth as a huge space ship, spinning like a top while whizzing around the sun at over seventeen thousand kilometres per hour.

We don't notice that we are moving because there is nothing zipping by our space ship window as we move along.  To gauge motion, we compare our situation to some independent reference point. Usually, we take ourselves as that reference point.  For example, when you are riding in a car, you know you are moving because the houses and trees appear to shoot backwards.

Now getting back to our planetary ride, remember not only is the earth spinning around its axis, and moving around the sun, but since we are linked to the sun by gravity, we also go wherever the sun goes.  Our sun is just one of hundreds of millions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy.  Not only does our sun move relative to other stars, but the stars themselves are moving relative to the centre of our galaxy.  It turns out that our sun and the planets around it, hurtle through space at about 69,000 kilometres an hour.  We are passengers in a galaxy which is spinning like a pinwheel!

So next time you relax in your chair, thinking how nice it is not to be going anywhere, remember you are really whizzing through space at an incredible speed on a journey of cosmic dimensions.

By Ron Hughes

It's easy to draw a parallel between our cosmic journey through the universe and our spiritual journey through life.  Many of us are unaware of both, yet both are very real.

The two most impressive aspects of our cosmic journey are the speed and great distances covered.  Without markers to serve as reference points, we can hardly be blamed for being oblivious to our movement.  But it's different in our journey through life.  Even primitive cultures observe the markers that indicate passage from one stage of life to another.  While differing in details, rites celebrating birth, coming of age, marriage, parenthood, and death are common to most societies.  We can spot these markers much more easily than we can observe our journey through space.

In the non-material dimension, crises of the soul may be encountered with calm or struggle.  Dealing with questions like "Who am I?" or "Why am I here?" or "What is life all about?" can make a profound impact on us. 

The important thing to recognize is that as surely as we are hurtling through space at thousands of kilometres a second, we are also hurtling through time.

Our journey through the cosmos may seem very long when we think of the distances travelled, but our journey through life seems very short when we think of it in the context of time.

As the seconds and minutes tick by, we are easily beguiled into ignoring the passage of those precious moments.  We think there will always be a chance to think the big thoughts, answer the big questions, and live out our best dreams some day down the road.  The "sameness" of one day following another with its seamless routine can turn us into virtual sleepwalkers - going through the motions of living, without being aware.

When this happens, we not only live far below our potential, we fail to enter into the highest purpose of our existence - to know and walk with God.  From time to time, we all need to give our head a shake, rub the sleep from our eyes and recognize we're on the ride of our life.