I’m in my office reading “Billions and
Billions” by Carl Sagan and glancing occasionally at the picture of my youngest
daughter that is on the screen of my computer.
In this very moment, right now, I am being
pulled in opposite directions by two distinct and powerful forces in my life.
The one is my desire for truth and my commitment to be fearless and unashamed in
my search for it. The other is my joyful adoration of the smallest and most
precious things in the world.
I delight in a chipped marble I once found on a
remote part of our church property, a marble that must have lain there for half
a century or more. Once I nearly swooned at the site of a little girl wobbling
on her first bicycle with a soiled Band-Aid attached only at one end and flying
like a flag from her skinned knee. This is one way that I look at the world.
I also look at the world with a stubborn
determination to keep my eyes open and to trust the evidence before me. Mindless
forces tear at our planet with apparently no regard for life, liberty, or the
pursuit of anything. Nature cares not for suffering. Lions sometimes kill baby
elephants over agonizing hours by eating them from their hindquarters up. Their
cold, emotionless eyes reveal a consciousness incapable of concern for the
screaming agony of their prey. The night sky is more than the simple dome that
Genesis describes. It is, in fact, the glass through which we gaze with infant
eyes at a universe which is beautiful, but completely beyond us. The unknown
forces that create the stars seem random and are violent beyond anything we can
imagine.
So you see, this moment I am sharing with Sagan
and Lillian is not the first time my life has been pulled in different
directions by adoration and reality.
Carl Sagan is the one who got us thinking about
billions back in a day when millions meant something to most people. Sagan
touched our provincial eyes and bade us see. And see we did. He provided the
first glimpse of the universe to a generation who watched Cosmos on TV. For many
of us, that was the first time we realized how small we really are. We are so
small as to be unable to imagine the size of our own tiny planet. The size of
our solar system is utterly beyond all comprehension. Voyager 1, the fastest
space vehicle ever created, has only just left our solar system after thirty
years of travel. At its present speed, it would take about 80,000 years to reach
the Alpha Centauri system, our closest star neighbor in this spiral arm of the
Milky Way Galaxy.
Really, why even talk about the size of the
universe? That conversation involves numbers that only make sense to
mathematicians and astronomers who are fluent in the language of exponentials.
With our measly millions and billions, what business do you and I have in
speaking about the universe?
So here I am, reading Sagan and looking at
Lillian, and I am now remembering Annie Dillard’s book, “For the Time Being.”
Dillard rightly notices that much of what we see and experience in the world
leads us to think that the individual does not matter. The horrific
brutality and utility of natural selection scoffs at our sentimental love of
individuals. Even individual species mean nothing to the blind forces of
evolution.
And looking to the heavens does not give us
comfort if we are searching for our worthiness there. Even now galaxies are colliding,
obliterating solar systems as they slowly grind through each other. What would
you say if I told you that an entire planet was destroyed on the other side of
the universe, wiping out an entire race of intelligent beings? They are gone,
along with their history, their art, their philosophy, and their desperate
spiritual longing for God.
You would say, “That’s a shame.”
What would they say if they heard the same
about us?
A tsunami rocks the ocean bottom sending a
locomotive wave to slap at our matchstick villages. Sophisticated theologians
say there was no Godly anger or vengeance behind those waves. Does it make them
feel better to think that the waves were random furies of nature? Is it a comfort to
think of our world as a cold and mindless orb where tectonic plates grind
together, greased with the bodies of those unfortunate enough to live above
their tortured seams?
And in the middle of these thoughts, I cast my
eyes upon the picture of my youngest daughter, hands clasped together, her eyes
gleaming and intelligent behind the smallest glasses you have ever seen. This is
Lillian Hope Atkinson, named in honor of Jesus who once said, “Consider the
Lilies of the field.” This is Lillian, whose precious eyes twice moved me to
write about her bifocals. This is Lillian. She is just one of billions and
billions of children born on this planet in the years since Homo Sapiens first
walked its surface. There is no rational argument that can be made to support
the idea that she is in any way special or of any importance in the Cosmos.
Neither her life or her death, her suffering or her joy will move the planets or
influence the stars.
And yet she lives at the center of the universe
of my mind and heart. Were she to die tonight her death would be but a tiny
ripple on the surface of the vast ocean of reality, but I would be wounded unto
death. I say unto death because you never recover from the death of your child.
My wife once met an elderly woman in the hospital. In the middle of their
conversation, the woman was overcome by racking sobs. She was crying for a baby
who died as an infant, some sixty years before. Her grief was still that raw.
And so I look at Sagan’s book and Lillian’s
picture. Suddenly I want to bow my head and curve my shoulders, putting my
arms around her and drawing her into the tabernacle of safety under my chin. I
would turn my back on the Cosmos and whisper into her ear, “Don’t listen to
it. You are special. You are unique. You are Lillian.”
Somehow the same mind that shows me the bleak
realities of the universe also tells me that there has been no child born of man
who is like unto Lillian. She is unique in all of history and in all the
universe. And this too is a truth that must be reckoned with.
Our common humanity cannot, will not abide the
thought that a child does not matter. With one eye on the sky and the other
suspiciously watching the movement of the earth, nonetheless we stake our claim.
We are unique. We are important. We matter. And
our best impulses lead us to cherish and celebrate these truths. Some of us
cradle what is beautiful and good, pushing it through the filters of our
creativity. They are artists. Some of us rush across the face of creation to
rescue people in pain or in need. They are saints. Some of us work for goodness
in quiet ways and in little towns. They are heroes.
On Sunday mornings, when I arrive at the church
before the breaking of dawn, I am mindful that I join myself with the communion
of saints across the years in singing ritual songs of human worth and of God’s
interest and care. I like to think of Christianity, with its stunning and
impossible story of the ultimate worth of humanity, as an offering to what we
feel in our bones must be true.
If our ultimate worth cannot be seen or divined
from the rocks and the stars, we will hold hands across the face of the earth
and sing it into existence. If it seems at times that God cannot be found, there
are millions of people across the face of the earth demanding God’s existence.
This means something. We demand value for ourselves and for each other. God
language – theology – speaks of that value in ways that are inclusive of
everyone. God words are archetypal. People can hear God words.
There is something deep and uncompromising
within us that cannot look upon the face of a child and consider her to be
merely fodder for evolution’s hard turning. And even though we often sin by not
living in ways that reflect the values we feel, we are ashamed and dehumanized
and repentant. We wish we were better people.
This is another major theme of the Christian
spiritual path. We aren’t the people we want to be. We admit this, like
alcoholics, and gather together to walk with the Spirit of God, one day at a
time. After many years, we find that our souls have been changed for good. We
hope and pray that we live in ways that reflect what we dream and hope for
humanity.
I stand behind Lillian with my hands on her
shoulders. We look into the night sky, and I show her once again the belt of
Orion, hanging there near the band of stars that is our only view of the Milky
Way. I stand with Lillian, and BY GOD I will see goodness and mercy in the stars
and in ourselves.
And I will stand in peace and with love beside
all others who see the same.
rlp
Click
here and
here to read the two
things I wrote about Lillian's glasses.
