For those who know me well, having meandering, challenging, conversations about 'Life, God, and the Universe' are commonplace. But sharing these thoughts more broadly, on saints and cigarettes, is a first.
My birthday always marks a period of introspection, and this fall, I've found myself lingering at the intersection of technology, science, and Orthodoxy—trying to map where they overlap, where they diverge, and what the empty spaces between them might mean.
Fall is a season of reflection, sparked by two books that have pulled me in entirely different directions—yet brought me to the same questions. One is Michael Bodin's explanation of Fermi's Paradox - Cosmology and Life, the unsettling silence of the universe. The other is Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, a call to keep both our skepticism and our wonder alive.
Fermi's Paradox, at its simplest, asks a stark question: if the universe is so vast, so teeming with possibility, then where is everybody? Why do the stars seem to be indifferent observers, blinking quietly at us from across the cosmos? Science tells us the conditions for life must exist, somewhere out there, and yet we hear nothing but silence. As Michael Bodin writes, "We cannot deny the reality of our own existence, yet statistically we are lucky to exist at all." The sheer emptiness can make us feel impossibly small, or abandoned—lost in the expanse.
Orthodox Christianity reminds me that silence isn’t absence but an invitation—a call to explore deeper meanings beyond what we can immediately understand. It’s where we learn to listen—not just to the universe, but to our inner voice and to God’s presence—helping us understand our place and purpose. Maybe the universe’s vast quietude isn’t a failure of connection but a challenge to rethink our assumptions about what it means to be seen and heard.
I find comfort in this understanding—in the notion that perhaps our loneliness as a species is less about the emptiness of space—and more about the limitations we impose on what we think life, or God, should be like. As Sagan writes, "There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world." We often crave evidence, but maybe what’s being offered to us is the chance to stand in awe of mystery—to sit in the discomfort of not knowing and allow it to transform us.
Sagan talks of a demon-haunted world, one where our minds fall prey to fears, myths, and illusions, but also one where reason and curiosity can light our way. His vision of humanity struggling against its own shadows complements Eastern Orthodoxy's view of humility before the unknowable—a reminder that our spiritual journey requires both illumination and a deep acceptance of mystery.
It’s a vision of humanity struggling against its own shadows, trying to illuminate what’s true. Orthodoxy, with its deep sense of humility before the unknowable, seems to be whispering alongside: sometimes the shadows teach us just as much as the light does. Sometimes the vastness isn’t meant to be filled, but to be faced.
To exist in this universe is to be suspended between the known and the unknown, to carry within us the breath of God while also being bound by the limits of what we can see and touch. Fermi's Paradox challenges our confidence in our own significance. And yet, perhaps our significance lies not in our ability to reach other stars, but in the way we live, the love we express, and the connections we form on this fragile Earth.
Our purpose is not about spanning physical distances across the cosmos but about bridging emotional and spiritual distances between one another. The Incarnation—God taking on human form, in a single time and place—holds a central place in Orthodox Christianity.
This Incarnation is the ultimate bridge—restoring our connection to God, showing that our significance lies not in vastness but in presence, in love, and in communion with one another. Vastness isn’t the point. The point is how we love, how we bridge the distance between one another in this lonely universe.
Maybe, in the end, we are not alone—not because there are civilizations out there we have yet to meet, but because the empty, aching void is filled with a Presence that cannot be measured or contacted by radio waves.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1, KJV). This Presence is the Logos, the divine reason and order behind all things, the spark that speaks into the silence and brings meaning into existence. A Presence that asks us, instead, to become the signal, to be the response to the silent question of existence.
And maybe that’s what this fall has been about for me: a renewed awareness of what it means to listen deeply, to explore the spaces where technology, science and spirit touch without ever fully overlapping. To acknowledge that Fermi's Paradox isn’t a puzzle to be solved but a mirror reflecting our own journey—a reminder that our existence is a beautiful tension between knowing and not knowing.
It calls us to live within the questions, allowing them to shape our understanding of who we are. It invites us to embrace the mystery, not as something to conquer, but as something to inhabit deeply, letting this engagement transform our relationship with God and our sense of belonging in the universe.
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