The Happiness of the Intelligent Universe

This sometimes annoyingly cheerful drawing came about with abstract figures and shapes that suddenly was a smiling figure in the foreground with eyes… It served as a cover for The Sweet Enigma of it All, but didn’t, for that collection, seem enigmatic enough, and I later chose another one done later. Strangely, it almost seems a Disney creature of effervescent burblings.

But isn’t it a comfort and an extension of our fellow-feeling to see and know that an intelligent universe is happy, instead of a universe of death and empty space and agoraphobia? I mean, it really is a central focus of our existence, if we sense worlds in a kind of joyous exuberance, with occasional gaseous explosions, like after a good meal… And even, yes, to know that the universe has intelligence because, by extension, its Creator, that dazzling Intelligent Designer, is every moment creating and supporting and dousing and recreating it, in shiveringly exacting perfection.