Looking East. Looking West.

Sunrise, sunset...

We humans, beyond our sometimes so important distinctions, have at least one core defining common experience through our lives, our histories, our cultural existences; the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

From light to dark, to ever shifting seasons, from birth to beyond, new beginnings and ultimate endings frame each working day and the span of each one of us – and every society, civilization, belief system and culture that we find ourselves in.

As individuals we search for meaning and purpose across our span of lives. We build and destroy. We lift up and pull down. The tides rise and fall. Destinies emerge and retreat. Empires are built and the ruins remain. The sun rises, and the sun sets.

Of course, the sun doesn’t really rise. Or set.

The sun sits still, (at least in relation to those of us on earth) and the earth revolves around it.

It would be easy to make the argument that this was the most revolutionary, unsettling and disturbing “discovery” in human history.

Many still refuse to accept or believe that the earth moves.

Common sense and direct experience are convincing; the earth is solid and stationary, and clouds, stars, planets and the sun itself revolve around us.

This is far more than agreeing or disagreeing with a scientific principle – this is a confirmation – or denial – of humanity’s place in the universe, in cosmic history, in the eyes of God.

Humanity, it was always believed, stood central in the cosmos, in the eyes, hands and intentions of the Creator.

If we didn’t, where were we? What were we?

Humanity’s distrust, even congealed hatred of inquiry, science and “experts” runs deep.

For several centuries, scientists and “experts” of all kinds have told us an endless number of things we didn’t want to know; facts and theories about our origins, our hormones, our destinies, even our identities.

From DNA to artificial intelligences, there are forces that influence, control and even threaten us that we cannot see or measure.

We see the sun rise; we see the sun set. We see the clouds scurrying across our static and unchanging horizons.

Or at least humanity did.

For millennia humanity toiled under a shifting sun. The sun rose and set over working bodies and a solid and stable earth.

The vast majority of human life spans were cyclical, predictable, seasonal, diurnal and not so different from generations before them. And, in most cases, long after them.

But we who call ourselves modern and civilized, don’t have that experience.

Our lives are not like our ancestors. Our lives will bear little resemblance to those a generation or two from ours.

Most of us, in our city streets and classrooms and cubicles barely notice – or care – where, or even if, the sun rises or sets.

We have our own lights and schedules and compass points – and they have little to do with north or south or east or west.

In a very real sense, most of us have no idea where we are.

For ancient humans, finding the Northern Star, the unshifting point in the observable universe, was essential. Even life-saving.

We modern humans have no “unshifting point” on our horizons; everything is in motion, everything is moving. But nothing seems to cohere, to gel, to make larger sense beyond the moment.

We, as individuals, as societies, as institutions, as governments and belief systems are adrift.

Few of us seem to know how to live on a moving, yet visibly unmoving, earth.

Up until relatively recent history, life seemed solid, unmoving and predictable.

But then telescopes showed us what seemed undeniable – that the earth was hurtling through space, revolving at inconceivable speeds, constantly shifting and making its way through a dark, unknowable, immense space.

Microscopes showed us an active and vital world beyond our vision in the other direction.

In short, there are worlds larger than ours – and there are worlds smaller than ours.

Much larger. And, presumably, much smaller.

We can be certain that those worlds, the worlds much smaller and far larger, that we can see through our devices, are not the end – that there are for example, life forms, not only beyond our vision, but even beyond the possibility of our vision.

We humans have a perpetual and immediate choice, a choice many of us still struggle with; do we trust our own tools and inventions – and “theories” – or do we trust our own eyes and direct, lived experience?

The sun rises, and the sun sets.

Those were, for millennia, the bookends of work, of commerce, of travel, of every aspect of human life.

But now we barely care, or notice.

But those circadian rhythms still surge within each one of us.

We live each day, in other words, in a tension between what we can see and “know” up against “science” even a “faith” that without tangible evidence immediately and directly available to any of us, we believe, almost like some distant pre-Galileo that we humans are the center – and lords - of the knowable universe – not some quivering, temporary invasive species on a speck circling a mediocre star in a vast and swirling immeasurable set of galaxies.

That “human beings as the crown of creation” premise is appealing, and I’m not sure most of have shaken it. Or are willing to.

We, after all write the history books. And we humans are the heroes – and protagonists of our own stories.

Or at least we thought we were.

But those enduring legends and stories, from our origins to our hopes and fears of our final destinies, at least as often show humans as clumsy, self-deluded fools who enjoy nothing more than harassing and murdering those prophets and messiahs who would stir us to look up from the squalor and chaos and join the delicate, irreversible dance and jubilant choir that the rest of creation seems to call us to.

As the tides and seasons would teach us, if we could listen, there is no end, no final stopping point.

East, the direction of the rising sun, is seen by many cultures as the sign and direction of new beginnings.

West is usually seen as the finale, the fulfillment, the closing scene of the story that captivated us for so long.

And as we find ourselves staring into the darkness, the light of a new day grows dimly and quietly behind us.

The sun rises, and the sun sets, and then the sun rises, and the sun sets, and perhaps in some way we rise and set alongside it.

We are strands in the fabric that is not of our own making.

We look east and west and see the passing of light and dark and imagine ourselves immune from the shadows and the light.

But the tides and seasons, of the earth, and of each one of us, continue….