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By Gary Roberts, July 1, 2009

I wouldn’t classify myself as a spiritual or religious person. I eventually became a Humanist after having been raised a Catholic. Being unfettered by superstitious dogma really opens one’s mind to the joys and wonder of living in a purely physical world. This doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t experience certain things in life that appeal to a higher emotion or to the aesthetic sense; things which capture a transcendent moment, or which give pause for reflection. In fact I do have to say that my thoughts  sometimes wander from the reasonable and I find myself indulging in the fanciful. For instance, I can drink in the visual arts and be amazed at how human beings can conceptualize and realize such wondrous works. I can listen to Bach or Mozart and be blown away by the symmetry and complexity of the arrangement of musical notes and how they’re interpreted by our brains. Such things, to me, can be considered wonders of nature. We are, after all, part of nature ourselves.

As realistic as I am about life in general, I have to acknowledge the fact that there’s a melancholy side to my nature. It’s for this reason that I add the following video to my blog. I’ve always felt an affinity for the poem The Lake, by Edgar Allan Poe, since first reading it many years ago, and I now recently discovered that a singer I greatly admire has taken this poem and created a song of such sweet, sad reflection that it almost makes me weep.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.