Trinity

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead. 

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man." 

--Albert Einstein

There is embedded deep inside the human psyche a powerful urge to venerate, worship, kneel before, and praise forces that transcend and overwhelm our limited mental faculties. It’s no wonder: we’re surrounded on all sides by the wonders and terrors of nature and beyond that by an endless black sea dotted with twinkling stars, each one a nuclear furnace suspended by unseen hands in the great void of space.

In eras past we gave these forces names, faces, and personalities eerily like our own. We grafted humanity onto the elemental. We saw the workings of a superior intellect in the unfeeling, unthinking forces of nature and attributed commandments to it.

Now, in this age of science, we have lost our gods and replaced them with false idols. We worship money, praise celebrity, and place ourselves on altars of our own making. We no longer look upon the cosmos with awe and wonder as our ancestors did. We no longer love that which made us and sustains us.

We have lost touch with the divine that is all around us.

We need not worship false gods or false idols when real deities abound. We can praise our creators without violating the laws of science. Reason and spirituality are not foes: they come from the same source, that undying spark smoldering in the unexplored recesses of your mind, and can be potent allies.

Let us give praise to those who played a hand in our creation; not the gods fabricated by our ancestors but those we can see, touch, hear, and feel.

Let us venerate a holy trinity deserving of our love, fascination, and respect.

Universe
Grand Creator, your thunderous and violent awakening 13.7 billion years ago made possible all that we see today, from the star-studded firmament to the earth beneath our feet.

Like a child roused from sleep you unfolded and stretched forth your limbs across the void, giving form to the formless. We approach you humbly, mere bacteria in your galactic gut, and thank you for bestowing upon each of us consciousness, reason, and free-will so that we may have a brief moment of awareness against the backdrop of Eternity.

We humans are but parts in your galactic machinery, awakened by way of the Logos to the nature of the machinery itself.

We are the culmination of your intelligent design, for what is evolution if not the most intelligent design of all? You worked tirelessly throughout the epochs, painstakingly weeding out organisms ill-suited for life on earth, until there rose an organism capable of receiving your holy spirit and deciphering your secret language.

We gladly accept your gifts, Grand Creator, and employ them to unravel the layers of mystery in which you are cloaked.

Sun

The ancients recognized your power and importance, Mighty Sun. They watched your movements obsessively, tracing your path across the heavens and calculating with great accuracy the waxing and waning of your reign. Our ancestors used your journey through the stars as a model for some of their most poignant myths, many of which live on to this very day.

They saw in your cyclical journey a parallel to the human life. Childhood, adulthood, middle age, and old age: these are the seasons and the transition from each to the other is akin to death and rebirth.

Even the final passage from life is but the dissolution of our parts back to the earth, which yields up more life--another rebirth--until time indefinite.

Imagine if the ancients knew that you set the planets in their orbits and that your light make life as we know it possible; how much would they have worshiped you then? Yet even in their ignorance, they venerated you above all others.

You formed the worlds that surround you and made life possible on this, our one and only home. For this we thank you.

Earth

Enduring and benevolent Mother, you bore life in your womb from its infancy and released it upon dry land. Aided by evolution--the master-worker--and nourished by the Mighty Sun's rays, that life matured and spread forth to cover every inch of you and to become one with your flesh.

The jungles and forests are your lungs; the soil your skin; the mountains your bones; the seas and winds your circulatory system.

We are not your masters, as some would believe, nor have you been given to us for subjugation. We are but lice clinging to your hide. We depend on you for protection, hiding beneath your invisible cloak from the poisons of space. We depend on your for food and drink. In fact, all that we possess--all the discoveries we have made and wonders we have erected--is made possible only by your grace.

We ought to approach you in reverence and thanks; instead, we inject poison into your flesh and fill your lungs with noxious gasses. We are a sickness unto you but by no means a terminal one.

You will endure long after all traces of our existence have faded away.

It is only ourselves who need be concerned with the destruction we sew upon you. The forces of greed and ignorance cause you discomfort perhaps, but threaten to bring us to a final extinction.

We come to you begging for guidance: teach us to live in harmony with you and the plethora of life you have birthed; to restore balance to your body; and to cleanse you of the filth we have spread into every part of you.

Amun.

/rant over