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"If Only We Had Taller Been" by Ray Bradbury

Lazarus Short

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This poem leans toward works, but is beautifully expressed. It's just too rare to see Christian science-fiction poetry...

The fence we walked between the years
Did balance us serene
It was a place half in the sky where
In the green of leaf and promising of peach
We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky
If we could reach and touch, we said,
'Twould teach us, not to, never to, be dead

We ached and almost touched that stuff;
Our reach was never quite enough.
If only we had taller been
And touched God's cuff, His hem,
We would not have to go with them
Who've gone before,
Who, short as us, stood as they could stand
And hoped by stretching tall that they might keep their land
Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul.
But they, like us, were standing in a hole

O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall
Across the Void, across the Universe and all?
And, measured out with rocket fire,
At last put Adam's finger forth
As on the Sistine Ceiling,

And God's hand come down the other way
To measure man and find him Good
And Gift him with Forever's Day?
I work for that

Short man, Large dream
I send my rockets forth between my ears
Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years
Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:
We've reached Alpha Centauri!
We're tall, O God, we're tall!
 
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Airus10111

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I've only ever read The Martian Chronicles and definitely need to pick up more Bradbury to read. Thanks for sharing! - This is a beautiful poem that accurately depicts our great longing for God.

Those last three lines are most poignant!

"Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal mall:
We've reached Alpha Centauri!
We're tall, O God, we're tall!"

They sound as if they were spoken by a child to their father. Almost with the same excitement as, "Look what I can do." Even if we were to reach Alpha Centauri (4.3 light years away or 165,000 years away), it would only be a very small step when compared with the great span of the universe.
 
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Lazarus Short

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I'm happy to share - and think: after the Resurrection, we will have unlimited access (I think...) to the entire created cosmos, and further, a cosmos made all new by the Christ! I don't think there will be much time wasted on long starship trips, either.
 
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Airus10111

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I'm happy to share - and think: after the Resurrection, we will have unlimited access (I think...) to the entire created cosmos, and further, a cosmos made all new by the Christ! I don't think there will be much time wasted on long starship trips, either.

A new Heaven and new Earth! - I don't think I can even imagine what that will be like, but it will be amazing!
 
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JackRT

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They sound as if they were spoken by a child to their father. Almost with the same excitement as, "Look what I can do."

Back in the 50s I consumed science fiction with a passion much to the consternation and amusement of my father "None of that crap is ever going to happen." I recall the immense satisfaction when I came home after school one day and picked up the newspaper. I walked straight to my father and held it up for him and said "It's happening right now!" The headline was "Russian Satellite in Orbit". Good old Sputnik.
 
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Airus10111

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Back in the 50s I consumed science fiction with a passion much to the consternation and amusement of my father "None of that crap is ever going to happen." I recall the immense satisfaction when I came home after school one day and picked up the newspaper. I walked straight to my father and held it up for him and said "It's happening right now!" The headline was "Russian Satellite in Orbit". Good old Sputnik.

Good old Sputnik! It's really exciting to see how far astronomy has come since then. I can only hope that religion catches up to or joins astronomy's pursuit of the bigger questions beyond our little blue mote. I was actually surprised to find out that C.S. Lewis pondered the issue of faith and extraterrestrial life. And he didn't approach the topic defensively or treat it like it was in opposition to faith. Those writing aren't among his more popular works and are harder to find. I can only hope that one day SETI finds an alien signal from far away and it throws everything on it's head, because in reality it will only make topics of faith more profound.

My astronomy professor in college ended our semester with a quote from Einstein, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." I couldn't agree more.
 
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