To Make Out the Landscape of the Universe?

“What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flourish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their very reality. I want to have things as multiply and intricately as possible present and visible in my mind. Then I might be able to sit on the hill by the burnt books where the starlings fly over, and see not only the starlings, the grass field, the quarried rock, the viney woods…and the mountains beyond, but also, and simultaneously, feathers’ barbs, springtails in the soil, crystal in rock, chloroplasts streaming, rotifers pulsing, and the shape of the air in the pines. And, if I try to keep my eye on quantum physics, if I try to keep up with astronomy and cosmology, and really believe it all, I might ultimately be able to make out the landscape of the universe. Why not?”

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, page 138

We need neither gods nor goddesses; this world is glorious enough on its own.

Happy Equinox, everyone!

–Arline

Black American Authors You (Perhaps) Didn’t Know Were Humanists

Authors, Blog Posts, Humanism, LGBTQ+, Politics, Race

As a Christian, I was limited in who I could read and learn from—a short list of dead white men and an even shorter list of living white women and men. Since leaving religion, I’ve opened my mind and heart up to writers from America’s past and present, and it’s been good for me.

Writing their own legacies in the face of injustice and hate—often at the hands of God-followers—these authors offer an abundance of humanist wisdom. After all, if no gods are coming to save us, humanity’s future is up to us. It’s up to all of us.

James Baldwin

Go Tell It On the Mountain

The First Next Time

Ta’Nehisi Coates

Between the World and Me

The Water Dancer

Frederick Douglass

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

My Bondage and My Freedom

Langston Hughes

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

The Ways of White Folks: Stories

Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Tell My Horse

Alice Walker

The Color Purple

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose

–Arline

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Come to the Edge

Blog Posts, Deconstruction, Deconversion, Secular Community, Secular Grace

Come to the Edge

by Christopher Logue

Come to the edge.

We might fall.

Come to the edge.

It’s too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

And they came,

And he pushed,

And they flew.

The edge—the brink, the threshold, the end. The edge is where you may, with one false step, plummet to your death. The edge is where uncertainty lies, and that’s terrifying.

When we get to the edge of nearly anything, our limbic system kicks in and screams, “You’re about to die. Stop! Turn back!” We want to run away. And if staying alive is our highest objective, perhaps we should. But is there not more to life than simply surviving?

If I leave christianity, where will I go?

If I keep asking these questions, who will be there to answer them?

If I no longer have faith, what will I have?

The thing is: you don’t know. Everything about standing at the edge is uncertain. But, if you’re honest with yourself, wasn’t life uncertain back living inside the fences?

Still too much outside your control. Now, at least, you can acknowledge that truth and move forward. Do it.

Do it, scared.

Do it, full of doubt.

Do it, seeking help along the way.

But do it, move forward toward the edge. Let yourself be pushed and then fly. You may be pleasantly surprised at the trip.

–Arline