Mischief had already begun. He says his own soul has a resemblance to the ideal of spirit, infinitely nearer than earth, sun, or star. What he means by spirit is the whole world, the meaning of the whole world. Otherwise, what we are saying is that God does all the good things and doesn t do any of the bad ones, and nature doesn t. That is not true.
Nature makes the hummingbird, but it also makes cancer.
And if nature makes cancer, and nature is the way God behaves, then God makes cancer. The only way that can be explained is that God has to be everything, and therefore he has to be everything bad and good, and cancer is a very terrific way of being bad. And it seems God has the talent. The grasshoppers called and leaped, the greenfinches sang, the blackbirds happily fluted, all the air hummed with life. I was plunged deep in existence, and with all that existence I prayed.