Dennis Kucinich -
by U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich
As one studies the images of the Eagle Nebula, brought back by the Hubble Telescope from that place in deep space where stars are born, one can imagine the interplay of Cosmic Forces across space and time, of matter and Spirit dancing to the music of the spheres atop an infinite sea of numbers.
Spirit merges with matter to sanctify the Universe. Matter transcends to return to Spirit. The interchangeability of matter and Spirit means the starlit magic of the outermost life of our Universe becomes the soul-light magic of the innermost life of our self. The energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and Spirit unite, and we begin: One with the Universe-whole and holy from One source, endless creative energy bursting forth, kinetic, elemental-we, the earth, air, water and fire, source of nearly fifteen billion years of Cosmic spiraling.
We begin as a perfect union of matter and Spirit. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from sky and Earth. In our outstretched hands, we can feel the energy of the Universe. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from water, which nourishes and sanctifies life. We receive the blessings of the Eternal from the primal fire, the pulsating Heart of Creation. We experience the wonder of life, multidimensional and transcendent. We extend our hands upwards, and we are showered with abundance. We ask and we receive. A Universe of plenty flows to us, through us. It is in us. We become filled with endless possibilities.
We need to remember where we came from, to know that we are One, to understand that we are of an undivided whole: race, color, nationality, creed, gender are beams of Light refracted through one great prism. We begin as perfect and journey through life to become more perfect in the singularity of 'I' and in the multiplicity of 'we,' a more perfect union of matter and Spirit. This is human striving. This is where, in Shelley's words, '. . . hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates.' This is what Browning spoke of, our 'reach exceeding our grasp.' This is a search for Heaven within, a quest for our eternal Home.
In our souls' Magnificent, we become conscious of the Cosmos within us. We hear the music of peace; we hear the music of cooperation; we hear music of love. We hear harmony, a celestial symphony in our souls' forgetting; we become unconscious of our Cosmic Birthright, plighted with disharmony, disunity, torn asunder from the stars in a disaster well described by Matthew Arnold in Dover Beach: '. . . the world, which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new, hath really neither joy, nor love, nor Light, nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain. And we are here, as on a darkling plane, swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight where ignorant armies clash by night.'