Today, on Erev Rosh Hashanah 5784, a ray of sunlight emanating from heaven shone down to kiss the bronze edge of my Dad’s memorial plaque at the cemetery. It stood out from the grass like a blinding light. It was so beautiful.

Just moments before, we had walked away after our private time. But one last glance looking back down that gently sloping hill of greenery revealed a glowing light that could not be ignored. 

It was just what we needed in that moment, and to greet the New Year. The 3rd New Year without my father present in an earthly way. But we felt my father today in a truly spiritual way. It was more than magical. It was awe-some. -- Karen B., New Jersey

My life has been filled with awe since the age of three, when my father took me outside to watch Sputnik sail across the star-filled sky.  One experience that stands out for me occurred during my surgical rotation while a student at Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

A man lay upon the operating room table, his chest wide open.  The rib-spreaders revealed his internal organs.  I gazed into his chest and watched his beating reddish-brown heart.  I saw his pale pink lungs inflating and deflating with each inhalation and exhalation.  All in perfect rhythm.

I began to think about the miracle I was seeing and how very few people are privileged to actually bear witness to it.  I thought about evolution; how all of what I was seeing came to be.  My mind wandered to the very beginning of creation, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics and quantum physics, and how God had created it all.  It gave me a new perspective on life and God’s creations.  All in the beating of a heart and the ventilation of lungs.  This is what awe is all about.

Almost four decades later, I was listening to my local NPR station.  They were talking about theoretical physicist and cosmologist Dr. Stephen Hawking, who had just died.  They talked about how Hawking’s views had changed later in life.  He’d originally said that belief in a creator was not incompatible with science; however, in a recent book he now stated that the Big Bang was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics.  God was not needed.

I pondered that for about 15 seconds; thinking back to my experience in the O.R.  I then said out loud to the radio, “Okay, Dr. “Smarty Pants” Hawking … then where the heck did the laws of physics come from?”  I would have loved to hear his answer.

It reminds me of Dr. Leon Lederman, a Jewish atheist and experimental physicist, who I had the honor of speaking with just six months after he won his Nobel Prize in physics for the study of neutrinos.  A journalist once asked him where the laws of physics came from.  “I don’t know,” he replied, pointing across the street.  “Go ask those guys.”  He was pointing to the theological seminary. -- Jeri F., Port Saint Lucie, FL