A matter of perspective

In the midst of rereading Margaret Wheatley's Who Do We Choose To Be?, once again I've encountered numbers that my brain refuses to process:

In 2016, using new computational methods and new telescopes, the number of probable galaxies rose from 200 billion to 2 trillion, each of which would contain 100 billion stars.

Two trillion looks like this: 2,000,000,000,000 

One hundred billion looks like this: 100,000,000,000

Unless I've dropped a digit somewhere, that means there are (approximately) this many stars in the universe: 

200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.     

Is that number meaningful to you? I just can't process it into anything other than very, very MANY. It also makes me wonder about the significance of the historical friction between ecclesiastical authorities and Copernicus and Galileo.

we're all on this together

Why you may be wondering, am I belaboring this point? Because the current state of the world is making me crazy and I'm losing my sense of perspective. Fortunately, I've also recently had an opportunity to watch Carl Sagan's wonderful Pale Blue Dot video. Please, go watch it. I'll wait right here until you get back.

Keep in mind that the "Pale Blue Dot" photo was taken from just beyond Saturn, which is still in "our" solar system. Can you imagine what our "Blue Marble" (above) looks like from the edge of the universe? ... I thought so. Does that help put our current trials and tribulations into a different perspective? I hope so.

Included in the payload of the Voyager is a poem by Maya Angelou which also helps me keep things in perspective. It reawakens my awareness of

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth 

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms 

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil 

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze 

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse 

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets 

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world 

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe 

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear 

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.