Meditations on Education

Study the acquisition of Peace
as often as the acquisition of money
for Peace is the Truer path to Power.

Study the Physics and Architecture of Love
and house the whole of Humanity
in an edifice that will outlast
any man-made wonder of the world.

Infinity's Best Disguise

This is as much an argument as it is a poem. It is an argument against the Empiricists (if I may call them this. I don't know how they self-identify or even accept being categorized) who claim that due to humans' size in relation to the Whole Universe we are too insignificant for God to bother with us. This poem responds specifically to Tim Minchin's nine-minute poem, "Storm", and ideas presented by Brazilian philosopher Mario Sergio Cortella.

Infinity's best disguise
is a finite thing.

It is hidden on a beach
in a single grain
and on that grain
some thing much smaller
perhaps living. A bacteria or
fungus or something.

And the beach is lit
by a glowing thing
whose name has changed
with the ages,
Amen.

And the beach is
made of stars
scattered throughout
the Universe, and they
stick to the feet and ankles
of those who like to sit
and listen to the waves
or run in the ionized breath
of the sea.

I started with a metaphor, of course.
We are those living things
so insignificant because we are so small
and therefore much closer to Nothing
than to the Divine, isn't that right?

In the Great Scientific Portrait,
in the Context of Infinite Space-time,
it is so ignorant and backwards to assert
that God would bother with us
or even that there is a God
or whatever He is called.

Isn't that what the statistics say?

But wouldn't the language of Numbers
fail when attempting to speak of
what cannot be quantified? Of what is,
by defnition, unquantifiable?

We are arrogant dreamers
to think we might actually have a significant place
or a Father to listen to our prayers, or a Mother
who holds us close to her bossom to feed,
who carried us to these cosmic shores
and knew we would grow to be good.

If we were important to the Universe
we would be bigger, is that it?
We would be more, is that it?

I wonder about the thinkers who say this.
Where do they keep their secrets?
How would they protect their most precious things?
and, furthermore, what about said precious things
makes them precious at all?

Perhaps their Numbers can put a value
on Life or Love or their children. 
I would like to see that number.
Or maybe neither Life nor Love
really exist if numbers can't add them up.
Or maybe they're just chemicals
just like God is just ideas.

Infinity's best disguise,
is a finite thing.
Humble, and small,
it would have to be a fool
to think,

I
I am special, somehow.
I am loved and the Universe knows me,
watches me, wants me. I am the Universe
gazing upon itself, or,
I am the Universe's secret (and perhaps only)
admirer, and I think She knows it.