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Carl Sagan in “The Pale Blue Dot”

Pale Blue Dot.

We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known.

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More from Writers' Corner

How Will We Find Our Way Home cover.

How Will We Find Our Way Home

Inspired by something her dear friend asked Sr. Alice the day before she passed away, the book is a collection of Sr. Alice’s poems written over a period of time, and often reflective of questions that creep into our ordinary lives as we make our way in the day’s challenging climate.

Tracing Thin Places

In the hustle and bustle of our lives we are often challenged to pause and discover “thin places.” As referred to by Celtic Christians, thin places are those rare locales where the veil between heaven and earth is lifted.

We Walk the Road Together.

We Walk the Road Together

Sr. Lori DeGiorgio’s We Walk the Road Together invites you deep into the hard experiences of people seeking a safe and more hopeful life in the United States. The photos of migrants’ poignant moments seem to mirror those of Jesus on his road to Calvary.

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