On Light

remember that all the days that follow tomorrow will be lighter.

may you be freer in your body, easier in your judgment, more hopeful in your breath.

Holidays are a hard time; if one person sets a boundary of health, others typically respond with hurt and confusion.  When it happens, suck it up and talk, explain and maintain health for your self and those you are most important to you.

Carl Sagan – Pale Blue Dot.

Between the reluctance to update and the distant perspective content on the last two posts, apparently I am working through my understanding of my place in the world.

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From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

On Thinking Too Much

Last week I tried honest bike commuting. I’m happy to pull my kids around town to events or dates, but never have I attempted a multiple legged trip. The weather was in my favor and the timing seemed plausible.

The end result was a meeting in which I’m afraid I stunk and the pressure of spending my time in productive way. Riding along the river, I wondered how people managed to fit commuting into their schedules. I tried convincing myself that this was a life-affirming use of my time, but my impatience and slight depression pushed all that needed attending to the forefront of my mind.

I arrived at my last appointment early, ten minutes ’till pick up. Around the corner from my stop was a house with a poetry box. These are big in Portland, but none are on our non-vehicle routes. I picked up the poem and recognized the poet. I read the poem as I am apt; a quick skim with no depth or attempt at teasing meaning out of the verse.

Forced to stand there, in the shade with minutes in front of me without anything I could take action on, I slowed and allow the poem to unfold.

Now I am a bit shameful, as this is not a complex poem. But in my skim/move on/understand/analyze contradictory nature, it is unusual for me to sit with any murkiness.

See: Infinite Jest.  With study guide.

So thank you, people who live around the corner of the people who I happen to be connected with due to a connection with someone who I know because of the internet. Thank you for not tossing up “Two roads diverged” or the list of internet-ish joke that I later found in a box.

Thank you for this:

When We Convene Again

When we convene again
to understand the world,
the first speaker will again
point silently out the window
at the hillside in its season,
sunlit, under the snow,
and we will nod silently,
and silently stand and go.

Wendell Berry