It is hard not to wax doxological when gazing at an image of such sublime beauty that looks not of this earth ...though it is the markings and well wrought frame of a terrestrial creature called the fire salamader .

Ladies and gents, click on the follwing hyperlink address and gaze upon the photograph of the fire salamander (apparently it lives in Czechoslavakia) :www.richard-seaman.com/Travel...der.jpg

Yours truly must wax doxological and type that the marvels of nature are the Creator's Art .

Apparently, the coloured pigments in the skin of the salamanders are caused by chromatophores centers of melanin granules and perhaps other chemicals below the immediate surface of the salamanders skin .

Nature abounds in marvels . Marvels such as white roses in all their granduer (one of the most beautiful of flowers), to desert turtles , to rivers, and black tourmaline crystals , to the night blooming cereus that grows in the Arizona desert, to humingbirds, and tektites, to neutron stars . From the eye-eyes of Madagascar to the Atlas Moth of the American southeast ---nature abounds in marvels .

Just today in a library book, I read that octopi that live in the ocean can reportedly see polarized light and , thus, be able to spot tranparent shrimp (on which they feed). What strange and beautiful visual qualia do they see with their quasi-sight ? Furthermore, what dispensations of spatial paths (which lightbeams take) can they see that we-- as of yet cannot---opening up perhaps a larger milleu of topography and cosmography ???

I read recently about reported case studies of newly sighted patients who have had cateracts spatially removed that report intriguing visual qualia . One apparently reported (in retrospective comparison perhaps) that the small light on the doctor's headgear looked like the light from an atomic bomb blast (in terms of its incandescent brilliance ) .

With all such marvels ...presented by the
One who as the book of Job declares 'gave goodly feathers to the peacocks' (some of the atheist citizenry would argue that one !) why would anyone fritter away a second of their time on such mundane banalities of repectible mediority as sexual cheap thrils (including the merely *cosmetic* levels of novelty found in new sex positions), finding out who a celebrity or politician is having sex with, who won the lottery , or pursuing such puerile amusement as farting and dirty jokes ???? Earthiness is cheap grace ! Earthiness, in all its meat and potatoes respectible mediocrity, is NOT only a waste of time but a waste of thought .

One is reminded of Jacob: the Isrealite of ancient fame, sleeping in the desert at Bethel and awaking from a busy , yet numinous dream to exclaim ,

'The Lord was in this place and I knew it not. '

POSTSCRIPT : The visual vividness of the salamander : its dashes of firey colour coupled with sleek visual texture (that might remind one of the sort of visual showing- forth of a large baloon used for travelling ...though not in shape, but in terms of texture and colour) serves as reminder that it is often the visible things and phenomenon that are often the most numinous . It as if the visible is that which is charged with the more active , more immanent plentitude that the invisible holds in store .

In one of the New Testament gospels when Jesus appears after his resurrection he entreats his disciples with the following words ,

' Behold my hands and feet. '