Galileo

Listen while you read:  https://youtu.be/4RiU2T4Psyc

How long 'til my soul gets it right?
Can any human being ever reach that kind of light?
I call on the resting soul of Galileo,
King of Night Vision, King of Insight

I'm not making a joke
You know me, I take everything so seriously
If we wait for the time 'til all souls get it right
Then at least I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation in my lifetime
I'm still  not right

I offer thanks to those before me; that's all I've got to say
'Cause maybe you squandered big bucks in your lifetime
Now I have to pay
But then again, it feels like some sort of inspiration to let the next life off the hook
"Look what I had to overcome from my last life! I think I'll write a book."

~  Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls)

This seemed like a good follow-up to "Ripple."  Let's stay in that esoteric Eastern mindset for awhile.  It helps to ease the pain of our current Western dysfunction.

"Galileo" was on the 1992 release Rites of Passage by the Indigo Girls.  In a time when a lot of music was love-song-fluff, it was refreshing to encounter meaningful lyrics.  The Indigo Girls were commenting on the concept of reincarnation, "a regeneration of souls for the betterment of all creatures and things over time."  I am not a religious person in the contemporary definition of the practice, so I am always eager to explore other ideologies.  Karma makes sense to me.  As for reincarnation, the verdict is still out for me, but I am a willing student.  Although Faith escapes me, I know what I DON'T believe, and I have long believed that I am on a journey to find out (channeling Cat Stevens, aka Yusef, here); I hope it takes me my entire life to reach any personal truth.

I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation in my lifetime. Well, that's a relief!  We can't be annihilated because we haven't made our souls right yet!  Let's just take some small comfort in that, okay?

Galileo, as you probably recall, championed the belief that the Earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around.  For this, he was tried for heresy in 1633.  He remained on house arrest for the rest of his life, but he continued to write.  Saliers commented, "He was like this pinnacle of light and truth, and the Church made him recant . . . I thought he was such a brave guy, and then to have to recant that, and then we all know what he discovered was true now, or as true as we can believe it to be . . . "

How long 'til my soul gets it right?  Well, I, for one, am working on that.  I hope you are, too.