Thank Varda

"Christ, Varda, whatever, thank You..."
-SM Stirling, The Tears Of The Sun (New York, 2012), Chapter Thirteen, p. 402.

I offer this kind of prayer. I am thankful for life and for many good things in it. We should certainly thank our ancestors for their legacy. It is at least possible that other powerful beings, unknown to us, also contribute.

I think that our remote ancestors, proto-human beings, became self-conscious individuals, persons, by interacting and conversing with each other. It is therefore natural that they and we have:

internalized speech as thought and shame as guilt;
personified, then verbally addressed, natural forces and Nature;
sometimes, though not always, personified the transcendent (either "He" or "That" in Hinduism).

Since we do not know the names of any hypothetical benefactors, it is legitimate to invoke fictional names like "Varda." Anyone who believes that Varda literally exists is letting their imagination run away with them. Value imagination but do not let it usurp the roles either of intellect or of intuition.