I wonder a lot. And by that of course I mean two things, I ruminate, cogitate, turn things over in my mind; and I am frequently struck with awe at the love of another human, the beauty of the world, the taste of clean water, the waves on the beach, or watching a kitten grow.
And I find myself this week deep in wonder. NASA released for us wondrous new images of our universe. Galaxies upon galaxies, images with sharpness we could never dream of before. We live in a beautiful universe.
But I was struck by one commentator who posted some of the NASA images and said something along the lines of “look, there’s millions of galaxies in these shots, there’s a good chance we’re not alone!” And I have to admit I blinked, and stared for a bit, and had to walk away from the computer overcome with a wave of sadness.
Why? Because curled up next to me, paw gently touching my shoulder while he slept was a kitten. Because earlier that day a horse who does his best to hear my thoughts had loaned me his strength and speed. Because in that moment the cottonwood, oak and maple were shading my office from the brutal summer sunshine and singing me their gentle songs, and literally exhaling air for me to breathe.
We live in a world totally enfolded in relationship and because we hold ourselves so separate, believe we are so unique, some of us still feel utterly alone in the universe. I have used the quote before (from one of my favorite shows) but “we are star stuff, we are the universe figuring itself out.” And that saying does not speak only to humans (it was spoken in the show Babylon 5 by an alien after all), everything in the cosmos is made up of the same matter, we are all siblings at the level of our atoms. We and solar systems full of comets, planets, suns. We and the deer, the mushrooms, and the tiny protozoa.Â
We have never been alone. Not for a moment of our existence. And if we can open our hearts to wonder we might realize that. What hardness might we be able to let go of if we let ourselves be part of the family of the universe? What might our fellowship with everything-that-is change in us, in the way we live?
I cannot help but think that perhaps we might be better able to relax our constant grasping, to make room in our world for for those we share it with.
In my teens I read a book (Raising the Stones by Sheri S. Tepper) in which a group of children discovered that their world (a distant planet colonized by humans) was sentient. That what their parents treated as a resource was a relationship, had been in relationship with humans since they had first set foot in that place. That relationship changed those humans forever, their final realization of it was what changed them for the better.
And lest we forget, not all humans are unaware that we aren’t alone. Indigenous cultures around the world acknowledge the relationships with and among our plant and animal neighbors, even with rocks, soil, and the Earth itself. While much of my own ancestors preChristian culture has been erased, the way the land itself often bore the names of our most important deities gives us a hint that even in Europe we once knew this truth. We aren’t alone, and we never have been.
The question isn’t will we find other intelligent life in the universe but will we acknowledge the vast, diverse, and interconnected intelligent community among which we already exist? Can we learn to gaze in wonder on all of it and to see the sacredness of everything that is, including ourselves?
