Primeval Religious Wonder
Because the distance between us and our closest star, Proxima Centauri, is so vast, we measure it not in miles but in the speed of light. Proxima Centauri is only 4.2 light years away! A light year is the distance light travels in one year: 5,787 trillion miles!
The vastness of the nighttime vista is heightened when we realize that traveling at the speed of light to the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, would require a journey of thirty thousand light years. And if e the prayer of the twenty-first century. What fire, thunder, and the mystery of birth once invoked in the primitive person, the magnitude of space awakens in us.
Star-gazing prayer staggers the mind,
infinite is the space between us.
O Stars, contemplating you humbles me
and shrinks me down to my proper size.
From A Book of Wonders by Ed Hays
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Prayer action suggestion:
View this slide show that puts our place in the universe in perspective.
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