Seven Secular Sermons, Part 1: Adrift in Space and Time

Now this is going to be fun.

It truly does feel great to realize we all are one.

So we shall meditate.

This meditation's rhyming verse describes a paradigm of us inside this universe,

Adrift in space and time.

It's nice that we can simply start by recognizing how a check of every body part can help us be here now.

We feel our bellies and our heads and just become aware how arms and hands and feet and legs are feeling everywhere.

Between and through them circulate our blood streams to refresh the oxygen that activates awareness in our flesh.

And as we slowly breathe we find that doing so can draw us into a more present mind to feel the moment raw.

With every breath we take and leave we clear our inner eyes and fully lucidly perceive each second passing by.

Our mindful meditative selves grow out of living meat and help our bodies stay in health by finding what we need.

So let's do that now.

Let's explore and see what's to be found outside our bodies.

There is more.

Let's take a look around.

Unless we're blind we're free to see.

Unless we're deaf to hear and realize we're utterly surrounded by what's here.

This place surrounding us here now where we consider this is just as present anyhow as our breathing is.

Our breaths connect within the air,

Within the atmosphere.

The envelope of sky we share is also part of here.

We also share what rests beneath our bodies' place of birth from which came all who now here breathe as children of the earth.

Of course there's more than senses show around us near and far,

The sky above,

The earth below.

There's more to where we are.

To north and south,

To west and east,

The world goes on and on.

The planet,

Every plant and beast,

And we now breathe upon.

Of all the earth we barely know the surface we begrime upon the spinning rock below adrift in space and time.

Our calm and meditating minds can feel this easily.

Imagination goes behind all things our eyes can see.

To find as further out we go,

Whichever way we face,

To left to right,

Above,

Below,

The solar system,

Space.

It's blacker than the night of course and bigger than the sky and it is hard to see because it was not made for eyes.

It effortlessly overwhelms imagination.

Still and everywhere around this realm extends and always will.

Around us all and everyone we've met or ever can extends the system of the sun that dwarfs all realms of man.

Out there all human joy and strife and knowledge matter not.

Out there this fragile ball of life is just a pale blue dot.

And there are other bigger dots and countless asteroids.

This earth is one among a lot around us in the void.

Yet all of them combined appear like specks of dust compared to one enormous blazing sphere,

The center that they share.

A thousand times as ponderous as all that circles it.

It radiates,

Splendiferous and indiscriminate.

It weighs 333 times,

Thousand times as much as earth which seems like mere debris,

A tiny circling smudge.

There's hydrogen inside the sun that lets it shine so bright by burning up four million tons per second,

Fuse to light.

This fusion forges helium and other specks of dust that constitute the medium from which grows life like us.

But near the sun its gamma rays and heat do not allow life smart enough to be amazed at what is true here now.

And further out it stays too cold for molecules to toy with games of entropy that mold the life that we enjoy.

While outermost in blackest night drift frozen rocks so far to them our splendid sphere of light looks like another star.

We're lucky earth is temperate or life could not have spawned.

This planet would stay desolate and all of us unborn.

As fully as we do depend on earth that we live on,

We also clearly understand we're children of the sun.

And yet the sun,

Thou all must spin around it,

Merely is a rare domain of light within a yawning black abyss.

In outer space,

Surrounding us,

Light distance is too great for us to easily discuss or even contemplate.

Space is mostly nothingness,

Around us,

Everywhere,

The freezing dark is limitless in empty space out there.

Of course there is some gravity that massive things impart and maybe some dark energy that pushes them apart.

But nothing's there to hear or see or smell or taste or touch and trying to imagine we can think of nothing much.

And still we feel for what that's worth beyond the scene and near the vastness outside planet earth that's real now and here.

In meditation we somehow expand our minds to try to feel the system we are now and here surrounded by.

The moons and planets we can see as far as we have found are lifeless earth now seems to be the only game in town.

Yet all these places we could go and cultivate and fill are merely specs in what we know remains much bigger still.

The stars,

These many tiny lights,

Each are a blazing sun and circling them caught in their might are planets being spun.

Yet humans cannot see that far,

The pixels of our eyes are just too few,

Which is why stars look like they're equal size.

Through telescopes we understood the stars all shine so bright that only monstrous distance could dilute them into night.

These distances define the space that all stars occupy and make a single real place that we're surrounded by.

The stars that shine all night and day within or out of sight are one hour home,

The Milky Way appears like from inside.

Our Milky Way contains at least 100 billion sun,

Through gravity they all are pieced together into one.

Around this place where we now feel what we are breathing in,

These suns form one tremendous wheel with one tremendous spin.

And all these suns are shining,

Clear,

Enormous and sublime,

They all are real here where we adrift in space and time.

Unmoved by beings such as we,

On Earth our small and clay,

The stars around us now will be the stars around our grey.

Except for those which have gone through their hydrogen supply and end as all things some day do,

For even stars must die.

And some,

Much bigger than our sun,

Burn brighter still and must explode one day,

When they are done with making light and dust.

These supernovas,

As we call them,

Burst stupendously,

Some can outshine the sum of all stars in the galaxy.

With their magnetic fields unfurled their yields annihilate or sterilize abundant worlds that life might populate.

Yet all we breathe and eat and drink comes from these massive bombs.

We're supernova dust that thinks about where it came from.

And since the stars have made the clay that led to our birth,

We're children of the Milky Way,

As are the Sun and Earth.

But supernovas are quite rare,

Three times per century does one of them explode somewhere within our galaxy.

Yet many supernovas do each second detonate in all the galaxies,

Whereto we now shall escalate.

A million times much further out than all the Milky Way,

More galaxies are shining proud around us here today.

These galaxies,

Each huge and wide much like the one we're in,

Outnumber all the stars inside our home and origin.

Around where we consider this,

Whichever way we face,

Drift billions of these galaxies.

Right now,

Right here,

In space.

We realize with utter awe and know beyond all doubt,

Beyond this world are trillions more that we could learn about.

And almost all of them must be absurdly far away in ultimate reality beyond the Milky Way.

From here,

Where our bodies stay,

Imagination climbs through further outer Milky Ways,

Adrift in space and time.

And through the emptiness between,

In almost all of space,

Where not a single star is seen,

In almost every place.

And meditation does allow our minds to feel it all,

To feel the universe that now surrounds us as a whole.

Despite all sun that interspers this dark continuum,

Most places in this universe are total vacua.

And therefore,

Atoms are quite rare,

Yet trillions of them have condensed into the flesh we wear that draws this very breath.

Two thirds of atoms in us are still hydrogen which sprang into existence not in stars but back in the Big Bang.

For all the time since time began,

As entropy made space,

Each travelled an enormous span to meet here face to face.

Through vacuum and solar flame they found their way somehow,

And we,

As that which they became,

Thus came to meet here now.

Through all we breathe and drink and eat,

They travel and endow with nutrients the living meat in which we meet here now.

The atoms that we are traverse all space and time,

Which means we're children of the universe,

And we have always been.

The atoms in us met before,

And they will meet again,

Compelled by universal law out in the there and then.

One endless cosmic maelstrom,

Age old and ever new,

Is where we all are coming from and where we're going to.

The knowledge we are made of dust compels us to admit the universe is in us just as we are within it.

From here we may arise to see and claim as our own the secrets of reality just waiting to be known.

And so we know the infinite is absolutely real.

It's here,

It's now,

It's intimate,

This vastness that we feel.

Whatever else is true for us,

We'll always know this rhyme.

We'll always know we're made of dust adrift in space and time.