Where I live, there's just enough light pollution to keep most stars at bay. How interesting it is to consider that technology can push away the ancient photograph of celestial bodies that nightly parades, moving so predictably that we long assumed the stars more permanent than kings, more powerful than rulers. Were a civilization 65 million light years away to look through its telescope at our pale blue dot, they would see the light reflected off of dinosaur hides and feathers.
Maybe that's why aliens haven't visited our planet: They're afraid of our teeth.
The vastness of space is so mind-boggling big that it's sometimes easier to entrench than explore, to recoil instead of redouble our efforts to learn more. That emptiness--the same sky that almost everyone I know sleeps beneath--means something different to each person. How interesting it is to consider that the immensity of the galaxy in which we live, despite its ubiquity, can mean something so separate from any others.
We have only this pale blue dot. Every human who was ever born has died here. Every human ever brought to term drew breath here. Every situation that we can conceive, experience, or verify has happened between our rock and the cold, silent satellite spinning in geosynchronous orbit nearby. The entirety of human history is here, written into genes, scribbled into dust, carved into the pockmarked bosom of the earth.
When I look at the night sky, I see the light that we have created to banish the lights God created over 14 billion years ago. When I consider the length of time we as humans have roamed the land, caught between heaven and earth, errant knaves all, and how obsessed we are during this dream of life to acquiring and applying power, of killing, stealing, self-gratifying, and debasing our best parts...it's enough to drive me into despair.
I taught my students about shell shock today. It is often one of the most sobering and emotional days during our study of the First World War. As so frequently happens for me, I think about the pointlessness of war, the endless ripples of conflict, the perpetuation of misery wrought at the hands who sacrifice the least and stand to reap the largest profit. I think of the crime that we endorse through our propping up of systems of exploitation and destruction. I think of how much we lose every time--every time--we embrace and encourage death over diplomacy, righteous indignation over ruth.
It's times like these when I most desperately hope God is all we claim Him to be--because I don't want the darkness that awaits us to be without light.
Maybe that's why aliens haven't visited our planet: They're afraid of our teeth.
The vastness of space is so mind-boggling big that it's sometimes easier to entrench than explore, to recoil instead of redouble our efforts to learn more. That emptiness--the same sky that almost everyone I know sleeps beneath--means something different to each person. How interesting it is to consider that the immensity of the galaxy in which we live, despite its ubiquity, can mean something so separate from any others.
We have only this pale blue dot. Every human who was ever born has died here. Every human ever brought to term drew breath here. Every situation that we can conceive, experience, or verify has happened between our rock and the cold, silent satellite spinning in geosynchronous orbit nearby. The entirety of human history is here, written into genes, scribbled into dust, carved into the pockmarked bosom of the earth.
When I look at the night sky, I see the light that we have created to banish the lights God created over 14 billion years ago. When I consider the length of time we as humans have roamed the land, caught between heaven and earth, errant knaves all, and how obsessed we are during this dream of life to acquiring and applying power, of killing, stealing, self-gratifying, and debasing our best parts...it's enough to drive me into despair.
I taught my students about shell shock today. It is often one of the most sobering and emotional days during our study of the First World War. As so frequently happens for me, I think about the pointlessness of war, the endless ripples of conflict, the perpetuation of misery wrought at the hands who sacrifice the least and stand to reap the largest profit. I think of the crime that we endorse through our propping up of systems of exploitation and destruction. I think of how much we lose every time--every time--we embrace and encourage death over diplomacy, righteous indignation over ruth.
It's times like these when I most desperately hope God is all we claim Him to be--because I don't want the darkness that awaits us to be without light.