Billions

We find ourselves on the threshold of a vast
and awesome universe that utterly dwarfs
-in time, in space, and in potential -
the tidy anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.
A universe in which every day
suns are born and worlds obliterated.
We gaze across billions of lightyears of space.

We are right to rejoice in our accomplishments.
To be proud that our species has been able to see so far.
And to judge our merit, in part,
by the very science that has so deflated our pretention.

If we understand nature,
there is prospect for controlling it,
or at least mitigating the harm it may bring.
In this sense, science brought hope.

Religions arose, in part, as attempts to propitiate and control,
if not much to understand the disorderly aspects of nature.
The scientific revolution permitted us to glimpse an underlying
ordered universe in which there was a literal harmony of the worlds