Are we wondrous?  Walt Whitman certainly thought so.  In his famous "Song of Myself," Whitman writes with passion and eloquence about what he considered to be the magnificence of the human being.  He was, he said, celebrating himself and all humankind.  He was celebrating vocation and creation; father and son; mother and daughter; worker and employer; citizen and country.  Whitman wanted the world to know how remarkable the human being is.
     Some people thought Whitman was idolatrous or egomanical.  They miss his point.  Whitman well understood that he was not perfect.  He was quite aware of his faults and flaws.  But Whitman grasped one of the most essential facts about the human being:  the capacity to choose.  Conscious in ways that no other animals are, humans are blessed with an extraordinary ability to ponder, dream, and envision and, significantly, the means to choose and execute these dreams.  We can manipulate our lives and those of the world in ways no other species can.
     And in this is our glory as well as our tragedy.  But would we want it any other way?  It's impossible to be free without experiencing both.
     Though Whitman didn't believe, it seems, in the conventional Christian notion of God, he understood very well the import of the idea of God for the human being.  Not only are we free, we know we are free.
     In a random world, we would know neither.