For Small Creatures Such as We

**"A charming book, ringing with the joy of existence." --Richard Dawkins

The perfect gift for a loved one or for yourself, For Small Creatures Such as We is part memoir, part guidebook, and part social history, a luminous celebration of Earth's marvels that require no faith in order to be believed.**

Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and producer Ann Druyan. They taught her that the natural world and vast cosmos are full of profound beauty, and that science reveals truths more wondrous than any myth or fable.

When Sagan herself became a mother, she began her own hunt for the natural phenomena behind our most treasured occasions--from births to deaths, holidays to weddings, anniversaries, and more--growing these roots into a new set of rituals for her young daughter that honor the joy and significance of each experience without relying on a religious framework.

As Sagan shares these rituals, For Small Creatures Such as We becomes a moving tribute to a father, a newborn daughter, a marriage, and the natural world--a celebration of life itself, and the power of our families and beliefs to bring us together.

Autorentext

Sasha Sagan

Klappentext

"A charming book, ringing with the joy of existence."-Richard Dawkins

The perfect gift for a loved one or for yourself, For Small Creatures Such as We is part memoir, part guidebook, and part social history, a luminous celebration of Earth's marvels that require no faith in order to be believed.

Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and producer Ann Druyan. They taught her that the natural world and vast cosmos are full of profound beauty, and that science reveals truths more wondrous than any myth or fable.

When Sagan herself became a mother, she began her own hunt for the natural phenomena behind our most treasured occasions-from births to deaths, holidays to weddings, anniversaries, and more-growing these roots into a new set of rituals for her young daughter that honor the joy and significance of each experience without relying on a religious framework.

As Sagan shares these rituals, For Small Creatures Such as We becomes a moving tribute to a father, a newborn daughter, a marriage, and the natural world-a celebration of life itself, and the power of our families and beliefs to bring us together.

Leseprobe

chapter one

Birth

Yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of [. . .] ashes.

-Marcus Aurelius

After our daughter was born, Jon and I said to each other a thousand times day, "I can't believe she's here!" "I can't believe we have a kid!" "I can't believe we made a person!" Every day for months and months we said it out loud as if we were just discovering how reproduction worked. We struggled to wrap our minds around it. I actually don't suppose I'll ever truly get over this idea. My mother never has. She sometimes still joyfully says to my brother Sam and me, "You don't understand, you didn't exist, and then we made you! And now you're here!" We roll our eyes and say, "Yes, Mom, that's how it works." Which is true, but no less astonishing, beautiful, or thrilling. Being born at all is amazing. It's easy to lose sight of this. But when a baby comes into the world, when a new human appears from inside of another, in the accompanying rush of emotion, we experience a little bit of the immense brazen beauty of life.

Rituals are, among other things, tools that help us process change. There is so much change in this universe. So many entrances and exits, and ways to mark them, each one astonishing in its own way. Even if we don't see birth or life as a miracle in the theological sense, it's still breathtakingly worthy of celebration.

Typing these words, I am, like you, experiencing the brief moment between birth and death. It's brief compared to what's on either side. For all we know, there was, arguably, an infinite amount of time before you or I was born. Our current understanding is that the big bang gave birth to the universe as we know it about 13.8 billion years ago. But the big bang may or may not be the beginning of everything. What came before, if anything, remains an unsolved mystery to our species. As we humans learn, create better technology, and produce more brilliant people, we might discover that which we currently think happened is wrong. But somehow, something started us off a very long time ago.

In the other direction there will, theoretically, be an infinite amount of time after we're dead. Not infinite for our planet or our species, but maybe for the universe. Maybe not. We don't know much about what that will entail except that the star we orbit will eventually burn out. Between those two enormous mysteries, if we're lucky, we get eighty or one hundred years. The blink of an eye, really, in the grand scheme of things. And yet here we are. Right now.

It's easy to forget how amazing this is. Days and weeks go by and the regularity of existing eclipses the miraculousness of it. But there are certain moments when we manage to be viscerally aware of being alive. Sometimes those are very scary moments, like narrowly avoiding a car accident. Sometimes they are beautiful, like holding your newborn in your arms. And then there are the quiet moments in between, when all the joy and sorrow seem profound only to you.

On one particular day a few winters ago I felt this intensely. I had just found out that I was pregnant, full of wonder and nausea. Everything was about to change forever. It was also the twentieth anniversary of my father's death. Twenty years feels like a shockingly long time. It's significantly longer than the time I had with him. I miss him very much. Sometimes, still now, so much that it feels intolerable.

Feeling the entrance of one new being and the loss of another brought on a series of paradoxical emotions, and a powerful sense of my place in the universe. I remember walking around the city, stunned that everyone I saw, the owner of every wise and wizened face, was once a baby. This seemed revelatory, despite its obviousness. I couldn't help reflecting on how any of us got here in the first place. Human beings