There are names we need to know...
There are stories we need to remember...
History does not define where we will go, but it helps us both to avoid making the same mistakes over and over, AND it helps us to acknowledge and be grateful for how far we have come!
Giordano Bruno was an Italian,
a poet,
a mathematician,
a philosopher,
a friar...
and he was tried and burned at the stake in 1600 because he proposed that:
The stars where just distant suns, with their own planets. He posited that the earth was not the center of the universe, but that the universe had no center. He insisted that the universe was infinite. He pushed the idea that the earth rotated on its own axis.
Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition. He was treated as the worst kind of heretic.
Even people who I admire, like Martin Luther, spoke out against him, kept his papers from being published and saw him as inspired by Satan himself. Leaders who saw that the church was corrupt and distorted and were working to try to change it,had a limit to the "truth" they were able to see and accept.
Giordano Bruno was a genius, or a minimum, extremely intelligent to be able to understand with such clarity aspects of our universe that were so foreign at the time, and with such primitive tools to study them.
Giordano Bruno was a hero. He did not back away from the TRUTH he saw, just because it would ruin and end his life. He understood a new and ABSOLUTE TRUTH and he simply had to stand by it.
Imagine the strength of character and courage that takes... Chances are his entire family suffered from his decisions...
I am reading a book called, "A World Lit By Fire" by William Manchester about the Medieval Times and the Renaissance. The role played by the religious hierarchy is beyond terrifying... Man with absolute power is absolute terror... and the church for hundreds of years controlled the world in the darkest of ways.
I love Jesus, the idea, the possibility, the teachings, the faith... but we should look with objectivity at what "man" has chosen to do with his story and the power of his inspiration.
If nothing else, it should make us more open minded and empathethic to the discussions of other extremists. Now, I am NOT SUPPORTING IN ANY WAY any extremist thought, I am just proposing that the concept of an absolute right and an absolute wrong may not be so absolute.
I feel so very grateful to live in a time where we can share our thoughts freely. So very grateful to live in a time where we don't have to believe something that we don't believe just to stay alive.
I also believe that we must not take those freedoms for granted, and not allow ANYONE in any position to obstruct science, free speech, free will, or independent thought...
When I hear the stories about these souls... my heart hurts. I know it happened hundreds of years ago, but I feel deep empathy and compassion for their plights... Injustice has always bothered me at a visceral level... it has disturbed me. It causes me disharmony, WISHING that man was not as he was... And, then I try to shift to the fact that the world IS and HAS BEEN this way and refocuses me on what can I do to achieve my WANT of a more JUST world? Maybe, one thing that I can do is to share what I see, what I feel, what I believe and hope it sparks others to both think more and share more...
For all of the problems with this world and time... there has never been a more enlightened time to live... nor a time with more transparency to all that goes on in the world.
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in front of many onlookers in Italy, because he could see the truth... a truth that the majority of the world was not ready to accept.
Is there any greater tribute to harmony...?
Is there any greater gift to mankind...?
What is the limit of the truth you are willing or able to see?
We owe it to Giordano, and to the MANY others like him throughout time
to remember them...
to celebrate them...
to learn from and be grateful for them...
and to continue to be inspired by them...
and do our individual, infinitesimally small part
to keep uncovering the absolute truth of the universe...
and of the amazing and scary dynamics that have and continue to guide our minds and hearts.
In harmony,
Nestor