Looking To The Sky

The sky and the divine have gone hand in hand since some of the very earliest myths. The vast, open and free space inspires those who look at it. The wind whips by our heads quicker than we can speak. The clouds are unpredictable each day. And the sun, it shines with the power to control our every action. When stated in this way, the sky seems even more majestic. It guides us but keeps us wondering what it shall do next, which is why our ancestors believe that the divine is located in the "blue yonder." Although I have never sat down to think of it, both the divine and the heavens go together in so many ways. Regardless of what each of our religious beliefs are, the place where snow, rain and sunshine comes from embodies a lot of mystery. How was it created? Has it always been there? Should we look to the sky for guidence? How do the clouds know what to do? Is the sky all pure science? Or is it magical?
The quotation I am going to really comment on though, is about how humans started wanting something from the indescribable, awe-inspiring sky and the gods. Armstrong mentions the human skepticism in A Short History of Myth which really interested me.
"Contemplating the sky filled people with dread and delight, with awe and fear. The sky attracted them and repelled them... In our sceptical age, it is often assumed that people are religious becaus they want something from the gods they worship. They want long life, freedom from sickness and imortality, and think that the gods can be persuaded to grant them these favours."
This shows that somehow, over these hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, we have changed in mindset. In the beginning, humans were simple. We used what we had, cared for the earth and kept in touch with the people around us. Our ancestors did not use the gods to get things for themselves, that sort of selfish thinking would have been looked at as irrational, even cruel. Armstrong goes on to note that it was not always this way, that for a long time people knew quite soundly that the sky and divine could do nothing for them. But, the sky is such an inspiring idea that people worshiped it anyways. I hope that today's human race can someday return to that mindset. A mindset of taking things as they come and for what they are, instead of trying to juice whatever we can out of everything. I hope that we all can become more in touch with the world around us whether it be nature or paved streets, and that we can "transend to make us aware of an existence that utterly exceeds our own, and lifts us emotionally and imaginitvely beyond our own limited circumstances."