iii A Catechism

A religion is not, first of all, a set of things you believe. It is what you do with your time. So this catechism is less a creed to assent to than a sequence to return to — a daily orientation, spoken or silent, that keeps the whole sprawling project in reach.

Recite it, argue with it, rewrite it. It derives entirely from what the chapters already say. Awe and gratitude sit at the top, because they came first and everything leans on them.

I. On being here at all. We hold that existence is staggeringly unlikely, and that awe is the fitting response to it. You are a blip on the cosmic radar screen, a blink of the eye in cosmic time — and yet here you are, for your whole life. Awesome.

II. On what we owe. We hold that gratitude is awe’s natural companion. None of us chose to be born; we were raised into life by family, community, society, and the deep biological inheritance of all living things. Gratitude, rightly seen, is almost automatic — even without a God obvious to owe it to.

III. On our smallness. We hold that humility belongs beside awe and gratitude. Measured against Deep Time and Nature, no single life is as central as it feels. Humility is the corrective to the drama we project onto our own moment.

IV. On Nature as kin. We hold that humanity is not above Nature but of it — a natural extension of life on Earth, related to the animal family, the plant family, and even the rock and crystal. Traditional religion tended to Nature’s people poorly, or not at all. We mean to correct that.

V. On the two “Times”. We hold that we live in Shallow Time — the brief now of a lifetime, a fashion, a car — while Nature keeps Deep Time, the vast unfolding of the rock record and evolution. Wisdom is holding both at once, and letting the deep inform the shallow.

VI. On the Sacred Spiral. We hold that the spiral — found in the nautilus, the fiddlehead, the Fibonacci sequence — is the shape that reconciles these times. To return to where we have been, and there to ritualize, celebrate, grieve, and transcend the ordinary, is to live the spiral.

VII. On the moment we are in. We hold that technology is changing faster than culture can keep up — Kurzweil’s Singularity — and that this is at once the growth-edge of abundance and of destruction. Ours is the most vital time of change for the human race: adaptation, or demise.

We’d like to stress that salvation isn’t guaranteed. Traditional monotheisms hold that each individual existence is teetering between heaven and hell. We acknowledge instead that all of our fates are tied up together. Beyond individual mortality: we either save the world, or we don’t. Our fate is in question — and that of all potential generations hence. This is the most vital time to be alive. Each person holds an infinitesimal share in the direction of civilization… but it could be as big as we can imagine and activate. Power to the People, and power back to Nature!

VIII. On humanitarian technology. We hold that our tools should serve life. Running water, medicine, light, the cooperation of societies — these are miracles worth a hallowed space. But power that outruns compassion invites collapse; technology must be bent toward humanity and Nature both.

IX. On the fostering of Nature. We hold that awe without stewardship is incomplete. To revere the biosphere is to protect it — to become, however imperfectly, stewards of the plants, animals, and biomes that make our breath possible.

X. On the spark of emotion. We hold that emotions begin as fleeting sparks, and that in the moment before they crystallize we have some power to choose what they become. To cultivate joy, love, and resolve is itself a practice of this religion.

XI. On unity and diversity. We hold that the urge to belong and the urge to stand apart are both sacred, and both need room. We seek to be one people without erasing what makes each of us singular — different, similarly; the same difference.

XII. On the sharing. We hold, finally, that no one deserves to suffer, and that our improbable good fortune is to be shared with our brothers and sisters. This is the divine cosmic birthright, and its one demand. How could we not?

So the whole of it, in a breath: awe at existing, gratitude for the conditions that let us exist well, and humility before the deep time that dwarfs us. From these — the fostering of Nature, the bending of technology toward life, the cultivation of good emotion, the honoring of both unity and diversity, and the sharing of our fortune with all.

Not a doctrine to subscribe to. A daily orientation. What you do with your time.