Pale, Blue Dot

A friend of mine sent me a link this morning to an astronomy website featuring an image of a pale blue dot, along with an excerpt from a speech delivered by Carl Sagan. Looking at the image and reading the excerpt, I was filled with strongly competing emotions, an ambivalence which itself so moved me that I felt compelled to write about it, to perhaps sort out my own thoughts through the act of writing.

I am sympathetic to the idea that humans have overestimated our importance in the grand scheme of things. I understand what it feels like to look at a photograph like this one and become overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe, and appalled at the audacity of humans to fancy ourselves the center of not only the universe, but theology, ethics, philosophy. In looking at photos like this one, which so poignantly illustrates the insignificance of our miniscule world, not to mention the insignificance of our miniscule lives, we cannot help but feel humbled, awkward, or indeed embarrassed by our own worries, quotidian pursuits, or achievements. In the vast arena of the universe, of which our entire planet, our history, our mythology, everything that we know or can image is but a mere speck, we are as important as the tiniest bit of glitter left on my skin a week after Halloween has past.

It is easy to feel that way when looking at these images. Indeed, Carl Sagan himself makes similar remarks. He speaks of our “imagined self importance”, and scoffs at our collective delusions of grandeur. And I must admit, my first reaction was similar. “How can we think we mean so much when we are, in fact, so amazingly small, so trite, so insignificant on the skin on the entire universe?”

But my first reaction was stymied quickly by my second, stronger reaction. “Why not?” I thought. “How can we not think of ourselves as ultimately important, when everything that we know, everything we have done, everything we will do, and everything we will contribute to the universe is possible because of this insignificant “I”? Does it not matter that though we are small, this skin, these hands, these ears,all manifest beautiful relationships which unveil and make possible the evolution of God?” In a previous post, I wrote about the idea that spiritual sight is both individual and ecological. God needs us, even as a speck of dust, just as much as we need it.

Quentin directed me to a lovely video, “The Heart of the Youniverse” which beautifully illustrates this idea. Everything we are, as individuals and as societies, begins with a single perspective. Everything that we know about the universe is filtered through billions of “I”s, each one inherently important, because each offers valuable information about the world we live in. We cannot know anything without this perspective. We must have this perspective to make sense of the universe. And though these perspectives make up but a speck in a large universe, they mean something. They each are the eyes of God.

Each relationship begins with a single “I”, and the universe is a network of countless, important relationships. The exchange of energy, the exchange of information all begin with a single entity, a single speck, a single moment in time and space. It doesn’t matter how small or seemingly insignificant: it isn’t the things themselves that matter so much as the relationships and patterns that they form. Each of us is a note in a universal symphony, and the intervals between us, the space that we fill with our shining selves, is what creates the melody. But without the individual notes, there can be no relationships. There can be no music.

In his blog The Wild Things of God, Jon writes about the self-important I, and how significant a shift in spiritual consciousness in the English speaking world might occur if we thought of ourselves not as “I” but as “i”, lower-case: not grandiose, not self-important. Merely one aspect in an important and complex relationship with the universe. I share Jon’s sentiments to an extent. If we didn’t see ourselves, individually, as the center of the universe, might we be better off?

Part of me wants to say we would. Part of me wants to say that if we were able to stand outside ourselves we’d see the world in different colors, and we would treat people in different ways. But then part of me clings desperately to the philosophy of Martin Buber, the idea expressed in I and Thou that we must be able to see ourselves and endless and eternal “I”s, because we must be able to see each other and endless and eternal “You”s, each her own “I” of endless importance. In my world, where God is not seen directly but through a holy network of right relationships, seeing each other as holy “You”s is extremely important. We are self-important, and we are important to each other. We are both necessary by ourselves and necessary in the relationships we form.

I can’t help but think of quantum physics. We are all at the mercy of infinitessimally small particles that make up the entire universe, each playing an important role in its unfolding. But the laws of Newtonian physics, the physics of “the big world” don’t apply to these tiny particles. They live by their own rules, operating in their own way. They cannot live on the scale of galaxies, and they don’t need to. Neverthless, they are important.

And like those particles, we don’t live on the scale of galaxies. If we only view ourselves and our lives through galactic lenses, we can’t help but be filled with a sense of melancholy or lackluster. But we aren’t meant to live our lives on that scale. We aren’t meant to act galactically. We are meant to act locally, to love those around us, to care for each other in the here and now. We are meant to live by our own rules, ignoring the vastness of space, and live as though this is it. Because in the context our daily lives, this is it. It’s a matter of perspective. There is only so much context we can allow ourselves if we are to fulfill our potential as human beings. Everything has its place; everything has its scale. We do ourselves a disservice if we think about our lives in universal terms. We need to imagine ourselves particles.

Tonight as I look at the stars with my daughter I will be thinking about all this. About intelligent life elsewhere. About their gods. About their relationships. About how they are thinking of us and wondering what we are like. And through it all I will be both humbled and exalted to be in my own skin, my head bathed in blithe air, part and particle of God, no matter how small.

Tags: theology, God, universe, right relationships, astronomy, philosophy, cosmology

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