MtM 43 - Connecting shores to stars

People live worrying constantly about the future. Some quite literally worry themselves sick. However, time ticks inexorably and never waits for those who disregard its preciousness. Let’s not forget the wonderful moments in our life. Let’s remember that amidst widespread dullness and dismay there are shining moments in everyone’s existence. These aren’t illusory flickering of the brain, but glimpses of a happiness that is rooted in reality. Most of all what’s missing is self-awareness, an appreciation of being truly, meaningfully alive. In those precious, brilliant moments of joy we experience the urge to reach out to others, to share, to offer understanding, acceptance, warmth, forgiveness and love. Christians are especially vulnerable to the mistaken notion that mankind is controlled by an angry god quick to punish people when they sin. Though the message across time is one of graciousness, kindness, compassion and delight in mankind.

In the first millennium B.C. an intellectual awakening blossomed across the globe. It wasn’t a coincidence this awareness occurred simultaneously across distant lands: Israel of the prophets, Greece of Socrates and Plato, China of Confucius and Laotze and Persia of Zoroaster. These new thinkers condemned the old, shackling religions and raised human consciousness to a level where divine dialogue was inspired by friendship and joy – not submission and fear. At last this outlook rejected pagan beliefs and eventually recognized the Most High as wise, compassionate and genuinely interested in human happiness and development. This global movement lifted the darkness that trapped mankind under the capricious thumb of inscrutable deities. It also paved the way for religion to create a new synthesis with reason. When people truly appreciated their fate wasn’t any more in the gods’ hands, but in their own, a radically new mindset flowered.

Once the gods were relieved from determining human fate, soon good and bad spirits were also banished. People realized their religious sense must coincide with their search for meaning. There followed a rebirth of vocation in relation to this quest for purpose. Man began to evaluate the passing and ephemeral, against the timeless and meaningful. Man wondered about life’s purpose as he fluctuated restlessly between happiness and sorrow, between dread and hope. The connection between “me” and “eternal” couldn’t be ignored any longer and was pursued with unparalleled urgency. However, enduring questions remained unanswered, for reason alone could not pierce the veil between temporal and spiritual without intuition. So mankind began constructing intellectual bridges to connect human shores to distant stars. Today, there are countless arches rising, from light to light, to a destiny that hasn’t been fully unlocked by us.