Seven Secular Sermons Parts 1 to 3 These are the first three parts of a series of poetic meditations. They are best enjoyed when read aloud among friends. Each of them will typically take about 15 minutes to read aloud. As meditations, they benefit greatly from an absence of distractions. A very relaxed, dreamy mindset is conducive to a deep experience. The best settings to do this are quiet, safe, undisturbed places. Copyright license CC0 creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ To the extent possible under law, Daniel Böttger has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Seven Secular Sermons. This work is published from: Germany. This means you may freely copy, modify and use these Sermons any way you like, even without attribution. You could even set them to music (the melodies of "House of the Rising Sun", "Amazing Grace", "The Rains of Castamere" and various other songs work with it), sell them or sample parts of them and put them to entirely different uses. Title image CC-BY ESO / B. Tafreshi www.sevensecularsermons.org Sermon One: Adrift in Space and Time Now this is going to be fun! This place surrounding us here now It truly does feel great where we consider this, to realize we all are one. is just as present, anyhow, So we shall meditate. as our breathing is. This meditation’s rhyming verse Our breaths connect within the air, describes a paradigm within the atmosphere. of us inside this universe, The envelope of sky we share adrift in space and time. is also part of here. It’s nice that we can simply start We also share what rests beneath: by recognizing how Our bodies’ place of birth a check of every body part from which came all who now here breathe can help us be here now. as children of the Earth. We feel our bellies and our heads Of course there’s more than senses show and just become aware around us near and far. how arms and hands and feet and legs The sky above, the Earth below; are feeling everywhere. there’s more to where we are. Between and through them circulate To North and South, to West and East, our blood-streams to refresh the world goes on and on, the oxygen that activates the planet every plant and beast awareness in our flesh. and we now breathe upon. And as we slowly breathe we find Of all the Earth, we barely know that doing so can draw the surface we begrime, us into a more present mind upon the spinning rock below, to feel the moment raw. adrift in space and time. With every breath we take and leave, Our calm and meditating minds we clear our inner eyes can feel this easily. and fully, lucidly perceive Imagination goes behind each second passing by. all things our eyes can see. Our mindful meditative selves To find, as further out we go, grow out of living meat whichever way we face, and help our bodies stay in health to left, to right, above, below, by finding what we need. the solar system. Space. So let’s do that now. Let’s explore It’s blacker than the night of course and see what’s to be found. and bigger than the sky Outside our bodies, there is more. and it is hard to see because Let’s take a look around! it was not made for eyes. Unless we’re blind we’re free to see, It effortlessly overwhelms unless we’re deaf, to hear imagination. Still and realize we’re utterly and everywhere around this realm surrounded by what’s here. extends and always will. Around us all and everyone While outermost, in blackest night, we’ve met or ever can, drift frozen rocks so far, extends the system of the Sun to them our splendid sphere of light that dwarfs all realms of man. looks like another star. Out there, all human joy and strife We’re lucky Earth is temperate and knowledge matter not. or life could not have spawned. Out there, this fragile ball of life This planet would stay desolate is just a pale blue dot. and all of us unborn. And there are other, bigger dots As fully as we do depend and countless asteroids. on Earth that we live on, This Earth is one among a lot we also clearly understand around us in the void. we’re children of the Sun. Yet all of them combined appear And yet the Sun, though all must spin like specks of dust compared around it, merely is to one enormous blazing sphere, a rare domain of light within the center that they share. a yawning black abyss. A thousand times as ponderous In outer space surrounding us as all that circles it, lie distances too great it radiates splendiferous for us to easily discuss and indiscriminate. or even contemplate. It weighs three-hundred-thirty-three For space is mostly nothingness times thousand times as much around us everywhere, as Earth, which seems like mere debris, the freezing dark is limitless a tiny circling smudge. in empty space out there. There’s hydrogen inside the Sun Of course there is some gravity that lets it shine so bright that massive things impart by burning up: Four million tons and maybe some dark energy per second fuse to light. that pushes them apart. This fusion forges helium But nothing’s there to hear or see and other specks of dust or smell or taste or touch that constitute the medium and trying to imagine, we from which grows life like us. can think of nothing much. But near the Sun, its gamma rays And still we feel, for what that’s worth, and heat do not allow beyond the seen and near life smart enough to be amazed the vastness outside planet Earth at what is true here now. that’s real now and here. And further out, it stays too cold In meditation, we somehow for molecules to toy expand our minds to try with games of entropy that mold to feel the system we are now the life that we enjoy. and here surrounded by. The moons and planets we can see, Unmoved by beings such as we as far as we have found, on Earth, our small enclave, are lifeless. Earth now seems to be the stars around us now will be the only game in town. the stars around our graves. Yet all these places we could go Except for those which have gone through and cultivate and fill, their hydrogen supply are merely specks in what we know and end as all things someday do, remains much bigger still. for even stars must die. The stars, these many tiny lights, And some, much bigger than our Sun, each are a blazing sun burn brighter still and must and circling them, caught in their might, explode one day, when they are done are planets being spun. with making light and dust. Yet humans cannot see that far. These supernovas, as we call The pixels of our eyes them, burst stupendously. are just too few, which is why stars Some can outshine the sum of all look like they’re equal-sized. stars in the galaxy. Through telescopes, we understood. With their magnetic fields unfurled, The stars all shine so bright their yields annihilate that only monstrous distance could or sterilize abundant worlds dilute them into night. that life might populate. These distances define the space Yet all we breathe and eat and drink that all stars occupy comes from these massive bombs. and make a single, real place We’re supernova-dust that thinks that we’re surrounded by. about where it came from. The stars that shine all night and day And since the stars have made the clay within or out of sight that led to our birth, are what our home, the Milky Way, we’re children of the Milky Way, appears like from inside. as are the Sun and Earth. Our Milky Way contains at least But supernovas are quite rare. one hundred billion suns. Three times per century Through gravity, they all are pieced does one of them explode somewhere together into one. within our galaxy. Around this place, where we now feel Yet many supernovas do what we are breathing in, each second detonate these suns form one tremendous wheel in all the galaxies whereto with one tremendous spin. we now shall escalate! And all these suns are shining clear, A million times much further out enormous and sublime. than all the Milky Way, They all are real here where we’re more galaxies are shining proud adrift in space and time. around us here today. These galaxies, each huge and wide, For all the time since time began, much like the one we’re in, as entropy made space, outnumber all the stars inside each travelled an enormous span our home and origin. to meet here face to face. Around where we consider this, Through vacuum and solar flame, whichever way we face, they found their way somehow. drift billions of these galaxies And we as that which they became, right now, right here, in space. thus came to meet here now. We realize with utter awe Through all we breathe and drink and eat, and know beyond all doubt: they travel and endow Beyond this world are trillions more with nutrients the living meat that we could learn about. in which we meet here now.
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