Why Is The Planet Mercury Smiling At You?

Mercury is smiling at you.

And it has been since the dawn of Creation — You just didn’t know it.

There’s been a happy face, carved into the rocks of Mercury, staring out the cosmos, beaming.

And when NASA’s Messenger spacecraft first looked on the face of this fiery planet last month, there was a smile coming back at them.

A introspective writer at Space.com puts it this way.

“We might not think there’s much to smile about on the sun-scorched surface of the planet Mercury, but a happy crater apparently begs to differ.”

Until now, it’s been a face that no one has seen, except for the Creator. I would love to think that He willfully placed it there, as an asterisk to his Creation – much like the puffer fish, or a brilliant blue on Amazonian lizard that few will ever see, or the hardy fauna blossom that pushes up through the Arctic snow.

If it isn’t His willful design, then it’s our creative minds at work, minds that He designed to exult in the possibility of the impossible, the playful in the mundane, and the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Are my eyes open?

We’ve seen other things in space. Who hasn’t imagined the Man in the Moon, in Kool-Aid repose? NASA’s orbiter took a picture of the famous Face on Mars in 1976.

And the ancients used to lay flat on their back and connect the dots of the stars. They saw things like archers with dogs by his side as he hunted a hare across the sky.The imagined stories to complete the characters.

Those who study human brain activity call it pareidolia, in which humans find recognizable shapes in random images. It’s true. My mind often looks for familiar images in unfamiliar situations . I’ve seen a face on the end of a fallen log, a toad perched on the top of the hill, or a cross in the snowy valley. And the big puffy clouds rolling across the skies are perfect imagin-atoriums.

This world is not black and white, stark in it’s definitions. We can play in the uncertain, revel in the possibility, and laugh at the irascibility of it all. Combine the wonder of Creation and an imagination unleashed and who knows what we will find?

What are the things you are imagining these days?

Please, share with a friend if you feel moved.
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