Canticle Blue

70. Discourse

"Without a first cause, what will have been the meaning of anything?"
—Cian Dhalen (Cosmic Shouts and Whispers)

On the first anniversary of the Bryn Colonists' arrival, Grahmen Ravi was asked by the elders of Shoriel to give a talk from the Great Portal Lake at the confluence of the three cities. As he prepared to speak, he tried at first not to look down, searching the audience instead for his dearest friends. He caught a glimpse of Annibet staring downward at a bank of glowing clouds on the planet. She was thinking of the destruction of Havel, but when she noticed him, she gave him the best smile she could manage, and a quiet applause to begin.

"Dear friends. As if it weren't daunting enough to stand on a transparent platform, with a planet turning beneath me, to speak to a crowded amphitheater—with Middi gliding overhead, no less—I've been asked to prepare a short discourse on 'The Story of Everything.'"

There was much laughter.

"At least it's to my advantage that I won't have to define it. To that end, please forgive me also if I tell you things you already know. Personally, I've always thought it exhilarating to be reminded of things that are simple and true..."

Grahmen did, indeed, manage to keep the message impressively short. In closing he summarized, not only the failings of secular origin theories, but the implications of cosmological evidence itself.

"By evidence, there is only one known universe, and it had a beginning. It is temporal, and it is growing irretrievably old as we gather here. Its expansion is accelerating and, left to its own relentless currents, it will, for all practical purposes, come to an end. In that end, by purely material reckoning, nothing that has ever occurred will have had true or lasting meaning. That one person can assign meaning to all or part of it, and another person can assign something totally different, is simply an admission that, from their perspective, there can be no meaning in an absolute sense. And a sequence of events without meaning cannot be a story.

"Beloved, we believe—and I would even use the word know—that the One who made things when they were new can renew, or make whatever He wishes. And the message in the Story which comes to an end in space-time is that there is One before and beyond it who does not, and He will have infused it with His purposes.

"Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I wish to extend my deepest gratitude to all of you who have enriched the Story for me. Thank you for listening to mine."

END