A Humanist’s Homily
My last hemi-decade or so has been one of great personal loss and trying times. But today I leave that aside and on this feast day, which marks for billions on earth a celebration of faith, I reflect on the things that I believe. And while they may be my beliefs, I hope I can inspire, if for a moment, you to reflect upon yours.
For I have met many on the road to Rome that have inspired me to think differently over many years, surely the greatest of gifts. Wherever you are, and whatever mission calls you, I remember you. And to ye readers I have yet to encounter, good tidings!
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I am a Humanist. Not an atheist, or an agnostic, or a congregate lapsed.
I know no gods or kings. But still I revel in the soaring aria of a cathedral choir at Christmastide. I have climbed many hills alone in the night and fallen to my knees, astounded and overwhelmed each time anew at the silent deepness in the sky. I have seen the beauty in Human hope, have heard the regrets of the dying, recognize the power of mortal redemption, and I believe our destiny is what we make or do in this life alone. There is no fate, only the compounding of choice.
But that does not mean I cannot grasp the magnitude of Providence, real or imagined. That does not mean I don't see in the thundering humility of the atom, or in the apparent coincidence of the stochastic, or in the elegant orbits of the wanderers above, something inspiring and scintillating, something that moves in rapid heartbeat and is felt in tremors. I think I know what the faithful have felt for millennia; I think I know it well.
Yet I am also a scientist. Not because science is my daily labor (though praise to those who do that greatest of our work), but because I see it everywhere, everyday, not a moment passes without it imposing its will and bewildering complexity upon me. The more I have studied it, the more my neural tissue has learned of it (and so great is that sea of ignorance to a vessel so small!), the more extraordinary and unexpected it has become. It isn't a subject at school, or a degree program, or a government funded educational or privately backed economic, initiative. I don't want to hear about the benefits of STEM to society. My interest in this grandeur of life is not some parochial scheme of personal attainment. I do, for what it might be worth, truly believe.
Like that bell that can be heard only by the faithful, there is something majestic in this view of life, but there is a covenant, a promise rendered, as well. We are not to toil in endless round for naught - there is a destination, there is a goal and a mission to a life of learning - we are bound for greater worlds beyond.
Understanding the span of the worlds we inhabit is defining and liberating in ways that only faith can be, there is method and experiment, strategy and repetition, it does not suffer complacence, it demands sacrifices, and it often doesn't answer your questions. Make no mistake, I don't hear the gears of a great watchmaker whirring in the distance (though I confess a deep affinity for all things Swiss), or see the palimpsest of a Great Blueprint visible beneath the substrate.
But yet I do see something. Something difficult to describe, and I am rarely lost for words. August, leviathan traces wherever I look, evidence for something magnificent and profound, proof that something ponderous in its enormity, if not wise in its age, once walked here, from fossilized imprints to royal footprints melting in the snow; powerful forces are at work in the Cosmos!
And they beckon us to follow, like the Fates' thread in the great maze, breadcrumbs in unexplored darkness, what greatness or terror we might find - bring your coins for the toll! There are ventures yet to be dared, and expanses yet to be spanned.
Not just out in infinite space, but here, right now as your mind processes these letters. It's happening this very moment, it's happening everywhere all at once, overwhelming complexity in countless dimensions of magnitude and direction, the only adjective which I can think of which attempts to capture its essence, is divine. I know no greater joy than to remember this, and to be thankful that I am given the chance to explore it again and again.
I hear it and see it everywhere, a cascade of knowledge unknown and powers unseen, a force that awakens whenever we catch sight of truth and reason.
But comprehending our place within the universe transcends an individual in space and time - this entire process of discovery, I think, is the Light of Life.
I recall it was said by Luke that the Lord, when He was young, dallied once from his caravan after a Passover feast, and his parents, despondent, searched all of Jerusalem for him unable to find him, telling others the wandering child was lost. And they finally came upon a temple where they found him arguing with the Doctors of the Faith, amending their orthodoxy to enthrall a crowd with a vision of a new tomorrow. And He was surprised to hear they couldn’t find him, for where else would He go but to bring word to the people. I am about my Father’s business replied He - and I am not lost.
He spoke of a world utterly alien in visage, and yet also somehow, more Human, infused with wonderment and insight, beset with an eternity of advances unimaginable and brightened with wisdom, even magic; a realm that called the faithful to the stars.
And why not? Is that so fanciful? Are those tower steps ones we would decline to climb? I say we are wanderers still.
And in the last of my meditations, necessarily of more simple concern, I identify, as always, as a Classical Liberal (or 'Libertarian,' as They now call me). Amongst other things we might be heard to say: "free minds, free markets, peace."
There isn't much an individual can do about 'markets,' for they are the sum of a great many, and welcome money-changers and philosophers alike; but on that subject, be generous in all things - there is much we can give in excess of gold.
One can certainly pray for peace for all on earth, if they deign, and peace is that great price, elusive if tempting. But peace depends much upon great effort and goodwill between men, and a long history of naught; wishing does not make it so. And yet I be wary of false peace as well, deserts of enforced conformity and the graves of silenced voices, however placid, are the failures of war, not the victories of peace.
But free minds. My God, an individual can DO something about that! They can start now, today, this second, no batteries needed, no assembly required.
An urgent message of so much history, so much literature, from myth to mystic, from scriptures to science-fiction, is simple and clear - to be rational is to be Human, and that it is through reason, and by reason alone, that we are free.
And how ironic then, that to reason is a power actually reserved exclusively TO the individual - no one can do it for you, no one can force you to do it, it cannot be traded or gifted, it cannot be legislated into or out of existence by imperial decree, it cannot be destroyed. If we are to strive to be more Human, surely an open and active mind shall earn thee a crown of life.
So let your mind be open and free, choose thought and inquiry; let your mind not suffer the burden of mortality or sin, let it rejoice in the glory that being inquisitive and open to new ideas, interpretations, new light in darkened spaces, is itself a new birth of redemption, a celebration of renewed love, and the slow discovering of a prophecy of greatness yet-to-come.
And great things will come! Keep vigil a flame in your window for fellow travelers, say a prayer for a more glorious morrow, and dream ye no small dreams!
My world may be at war, as it usually is. My society may, in many different ways, be oppressed. My liberties may, as ever, be besieged. And everywhere, someone suffers from something or for something, and I neither forget nor ignore them; I hear them today. But still my faith that knowledge and science and free thought are a guidestar to light a new way, to build every Tomorrow anew, cog by cog, torch by torch, idea by new idea, persists - reason is evergreen and wonder has eternal life.
And despite that milieu of trouble and din that often surrounds us every day, which tempts us to forgo the steady exertion of enlightenment, my mind, witness ye reader, is still open and, I hope, forever free: Merry Christmas.
