What about the transcendence good ol fundamental science has to offer?
How was it that the Abrahamic Mindset always felt foreign to me, if not plain wrong.
Recently I finally nailed that one too. It goes back to my early childhood, even before starting kindergarten at John J. Audubon Elementary school in Chicago. I’d been playing in the pool of warming sunlight streaming through the window onto our living room carpet, the light was making the dust specks look like stars. I remember focusing on watching them floating around, then see ‘em whooshing after my mom, when she’d pass by. I was already fascinated by the night sky full of sparkling lights and these specks of dust transported me into space surrounded by distant galaxies.
Then I hear myself asking mom: “What is god?"
I like to think it took her a few beats, then she answered: “A speck of dust that wanted to be more” .
I must have been primed because it blew me away in a way that literally permeated by entire being. After the initial shock wore off, it didn’t provide any sort of answers, it was more like a suggestion, a question, even a challenge to do better. God as a speck that simply wanted to be more. It was beautiful, awesome, and this little boy carried that conception right into school and it followed me for the rest of my years.
It’s taken over 60 years for me to fully appreciate how that set me on my singular path.
I believe what happened was that the notion of a little speck of dust wanting to be more, wound up filling and satisfying that little “god” niche’ that resides within our human brain.
When the Abrahamic self-serving egotistical God was presented to me, there was no place for it to take hold in my brain or heart, so I was free of its shackles and free to find my own way through my years.
This sense of self and spiritual solidity emerged out of a lifetime of curiosity and learning about myself, Earth, deep-time, her amazing evolutionary story and the development of life and creatures and ourselves. Appreciating why we can’t understand an organism, without also understanding it’s environment - all of that offers insights we can apply to our day to days.
Especially realizing how the components of my own physical body had their origins eons ago. The visceral awareness that for the most part mammals have the same skeleton and parts I do, of course in different proportions, just the same it’s profound realization that can hint at the deep history within your own body. Even before that, if you consider how Earth herself had to go through intense processing before promising molecular tricks and biological solutions to life’s challenges would have the material resources at hand to allow them to be put to the test and prosper.
It’s a long, amazingly complex story that keeps evolving as more evidence gets collected and processed into shared scientific knowledge. Folds within folds of cumulative harmonic complexity flowing down the cascade of time. Considering I’ve been paying attention to it since my grade school days, it’s inevitable that I’ve achieved some insights along the way.
In the end, the thought of being an intelligent self-aware element of creation, one who is capable of savoring the pageant of Earth’s amazing Evolution **is more than comforting.
It provides me with a spiritual foundation and solidity in the face of challenges, inevitable failings and my coming death. I possess a transcendent depth of peace and security no Holy Book, or fast-talking pick-pocket preachers can get close to offering. It’s good news worth passing around to the few who are honestly curious about such matters.
And so it is.
But I’m a goddess!