“Pale Blue Dot”– An Ode to Mother Earth
~ by Carl Sagan

“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
~ Carl Sagan

“LAUDATO SI’, mi’ Signore” – “Praise be to you, my Lord”.

In the words of this beautiful canticle, Saint Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.

“Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with colored flowers and herbs”. . .

“This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.”
~ Pope Francis – Climate encyclical message

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” ..
“The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Cherish or Perish.
Co-exist cooperatively, or
Co-expire catastrophically.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings

“Sit, be still, and listen,
because you’re drunk
and we’re at the edge of the roof.”
~ Rumi

Introduction to “Pale Blue Dot”– An Ode to Mother Earth ~ by Carl Sagan.

Dear Friends,

Happy Mother’s Day, 2023!

To honor Mother’s day, as we reverently remember Divine Mother, Earth Mother Gaia, and all loving birth mothers, I have again posted below a three minute YouTube voice video  (called “Pale Blue Dot”) of legendary astronomer Carl Sagan reciting an ode to Mother Earth, which was inspired by a unique NASA photo of Earth taken in 1990, when the Voyager space craft was nearly four trillion (4,000,000,000,000) miles from Earth, beyond the orbit of Pluto.

NASA then finally acceded to Sagan’s desperate pleas and turned Voyager’s camera back toward Earth to photograph our precious planet as no human had ever before seen it.  

From that distance, the Earth appears as just a tiny blue speck illuminated by sunlight, inspiring Sagan’s following eloquent ode to Earth:

Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” ode to Earth:

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest.

But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Voice Recitation of Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” ode to Earth.

In this Pale Blue Dot” voice message Carl Sagan eloquently recites his foregoing poignant ode to our precious planet, Mother Earth, which he composed while humbly reflecting on that unique NASA photo.

Sagan’s poignant  message concludes with these wise words:

“[T]his distant image of our tiny world . . . underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”



Concluding Comments and Invocation.

Especially in these extraordinarily turbulent and potentially catastrophic times, it is imperative that Humankind honor, preserve and cherish Earth Mother and all life she births and sustains; never forgetting that her Nature is our nature; that we are inextricably interconnected with mother Earth, so what we do to her we do to ourselves; and that it is only our human species which is responsible for, and must urgently redress, all crises and conflicts which now imminently threaten Earth-life as we’ve known it.

Thus we must relentlessly resist and vigilantly redress all insanely unsustainable pillaging, plundering and poisoning of Nature’s bountiful resources and miraculous life support systems, which are our only true wealth.

Invocation

As a united global family, may we thereby –
each from our unique perspective and in our unique way –
lovingly restore, preserve and protect our beloved planet,
the only home we’ve ever known.

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner