When will we speak the same language?

This past weekend I found myself sitting in my car for a while, flipping through the local radio stations. I ended up listening to the Catholic station for a little bit. I usually try to avoid stuff like that, but for some reason I kept listening.

The program's host was speaking with a guest and taking calls on the meaning of the Holy Spirit. I thought it was intriguing that people who make practicing and following religion a habit/way of life still don't have a firm definition on the relationships of the Father/Son/Holy Spirit. The Trinity is one of the pillars of the faith, is it not? Yet here was caller after caller asking about what the Holy Spirit may mean in and amongst it all.

At one point, the guest told a story of how a deacon at a church was speaking with and praying with a woman parishoner who was depressed and confused.  According to this story, the deacon said he felt the Holy Spirit was speaking to him and told him "Age 44", and the deacon felt that he needed to say this to the woman, ridiculous as it may sound to him.  He did so, saying the Holy Spirit was guiding him, and the woman began to sob uncontrollably.  When she gained composure again, she said that she was 44 years old when her son committed suicide.  Apparently this was what she needed to hear to re-gain her faith in God and prove to her that God was real.

And I thought, what is the difference between this and the Channelings that many people here post about?  This deacon believed he received a message from the Holy Spirit, yet people like him shoo off others who say they have received a message from God, or Gabriel, or Michael, etc., etc.  If he wasn't a deacon, wouldn't he possibly think the message could have come from someone/something else other than the Holy Spirit?  A channeling of another divine being perhaps?  Or did he tap into a latent psychic ability for a moment?

Now, on the completely other end of things, today I was re-reading the introduction to the book "The Varieties of Scientific Experience" by Carl Sagan, edited by his widow, Ann Druyan.  Carl was a notorious atheist, but knew PLENTY on the subject of religion, mysticism and sprituality.  In the intro, Ann writes about Carl, "Science has carried us to the gateway to the universe.  And yet our conception of our surroundings remains the disproportionate view of the still-small child.  We are spiritually and culturally paralyzed, unable to face the vastness, to embrace our lack of centrality and find our place in the fabric of nature.  We batter this planet as if we had someplace else to go.  That we even do science is a hopeful glimmer of mental health.  However, it's not enough merely to accept these insights intellectually while we cling to a spiritual ideology that is not only rootless in nature but also, in many ways, contemptuous of what is natural.  Carl believed that our best hope of preserving the exquisite fabric of life on our world would be to take the revelations of science to heart.

"And that he did. 'Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious,' he wrote in his book Cosmos.  'If a human disagrees with you, let him live.  In a hundred billion galaxies you will not find another.'  He lobbied NASA for years to instruct Voyager 2 to look back to Earth and take a picture of it from out by Neptune.  Then he asked us to meditate on that image and see our home for what it is -- just a tiny 'pale blue dot' afloat in the immensity of the universe.  He dreamed that we might attain a spiritual understanding of our true circumstances.  Like a prophet of old, he wanted to arouse us from our stupor so that we would take action to protect our home.

"Carl wanted us to see ourselves not as the failed clay of a disappointed Creator but as starstuff, made of atoms forged in the fiery hearts of distant stars.  To him we were 'starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of 10 billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms, tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose.'  For him science was, in part, a kind of 'informed worship.'  No single step in the pursuit of enlightenment should ever be considered sacred; only the search was."

Wow.

So, I found myself realizing that the atheist sounded a lot more spiritual than some of the most religious people out there.  But yet, didn't you see some things in those words that resonated with what we talk about here, too?

Religion is at one end.  Science is at the other.  Yet both can talk about the same things, the same meanings.  They're just using different words, different feelings.  Aren't they?

And here are we.  Somewhere in the middle.  We speak of channelings or guardian angels while some people speak of Holy Spirit.  We speak of 'starseeds' and being one with the universe while others speak of 'starstuff', preciousness of life, and the 'sacred search' of knowledge.

All of us say the same things -- theists, mystics, skeptics.  But will we ever have 'one language' that can unite us?  A complete blending of religion and science and the 'mystical in-between' that can help bring about a better, more concise understanding of whatever this universe is that we call 'the universe', not to mention what may be beyond it, and beyond that, and beyond that?  Or possibly within it, and within that, and within that.

I know one day this will happen.  I would just love to see it within my lifetime.  In the meantime, I hope to do what I can to help bring it about, as I know you all do, too.

Thanks for reading.