Dino, I just love your writing! You are in the daily reading for me as much as VMB, as much as my daily meditation, as much as conversations with my wife and my sister, and for the same reasons. I’ve always gravitated toward science as it seemed more ‘certain’ of itself and because I was uncomfortable with the boilerplate I learned about ‘faith’ early on; belief in the unknowable.
Then came the self-imposed crisis I could neither evade or avoid; alcohol was killing me and, worse, I was probably not going to go alone. I needed a power greater than myself and this led to the most important question I’ve ever heard; ‘Well, what came before the Big Bang?’ This simple idea of first cause opened a door for me that remains open still, and is the foundation for a mind that loves science and worships the mystery. Strangely enough, adding the ‘Unknowable’ to my personal equation stabilized my erratic orbit and made my recovery possible. 🙏
When I write these pieces, I’m usually just sitting here talking to myself and to whatever small circle of souls happens to wander by. Knowing that my words live in the same daily orbit as your meditation, your conversations with your wife and sister, and VMB feels like being invited into your inner room. That’s not a small thing. I don’t take it lightly.
What you shared about alcohol and that crisis point, that place where you realized it might not just take you but take others with you, that’s holy ground to me. Not in the religious sense, in the human one. There is something fiercely honest about a person who can say, out loud, “I needed a power greater than myself” and then keep following that thread instead of pretending they muscled through on their own.
I love the way you described that question: “What came before the Big Bang?” I’ve sat with that too, more than once. Not because I thought it would give me a neat answer, but because it rearranges the scale of the room. You stare into that kind of mystery long enough and all the noise we make down here, all the puffed up certainty and tribal chest beating, starts to look very small and very temporary.
For me, thinking about that “before” has never solved anything in the way a scientist might like, but it has given me something quieter and more enduring. Perspective. Comfort in the unknown. A strange kind of companionship with mystery itself. I don’t believe in a God who keeps ledgers, but I do believe there is something real in that space where your love of science meets your reverence for what cannot be measured. You called it worship of the mystery. I think that is as honest a faith as any I have heard.
You also put your finger on something I see in a lot of us who grew up around boilerplate religion. The scripts about “faith” felt hollow because they were mostly demands for agreement, not invitations to wonder. You took the long way around. You let the crisis strip you down to the studs. You walked back into life with science still in your bones and the unknowable now sitting at your table. That is not a collapse of reason. That is reason finally making room for the rest of being human.
What I hear in your note is a kind of hard-won equilibrium. You did not abandon your mind to get sober. You did not surrender your curiosity. You added something. That mysterious first cause, that presence before the beginning, that ungraspable something that does not need our definitions in order to be real. And somehow, that addition steadied the orbit. That makes deep sense to me.
I move through the world as a secular humanist and a faith friend. I do not need to solve the nature of the universe in order to stand alongside someone who has felt it move under their feet. What matters to me is exactly what you just modeled. Humility. Curiosity. A willingness to admit that certainty alone could not save you, and that the unknowable had a role in your healing.
I am grateful you let me see that part of your story. And I am quietly glad that whatever I am doing on the page has earned a place in your daily rotation, next to the people and practices that keep you grounded. That feels like the best kind of affirmation, not of me as a writer, but of the conversation we are all trying to have with this baffling, beautiful, dangerous life.
So I will keep writing from this odd crossroads where science, mystery, grief, and stubborn hope all sit together. And I am glad to know you are out there, reading, orbit steady, mind alive, heart in on the deal.
Thank you for letting me walk a little of this pilgrimage with you.
Thank you Dino! Happy holidays & your time away! Hope you enjoy a blessed break & happy Thanksgiving, my friend - I give thanks for you & your Light Against Empire to calm the chaos of our world, and for your exceptional gift of beautiful writing to explain it all through science & faith, in a truly humane way!
Dino, I just love your writing! You are in the daily reading for me as much as VMB, as much as my daily meditation, as much as conversations with my wife and my sister, and for the same reasons. I’ve always gravitated toward science as it seemed more ‘certain’ of itself and because I was uncomfortable with the boilerplate I learned about ‘faith’ early on; belief in the unknowable.
Then came the self-imposed crisis I could neither evade or avoid; alcohol was killing me and, worse, I was probably not going to go alone. I needed a power greater than myself and this led to the most important question I’ve ever heard; ‘Well, what came before the Big Bang?’ This simple idea of first cause opened a door for me that remains open still, and is the foundation for a mind that loves science and worships the mystery. Strangely enough, adding the ‘Unknowable’ to my personal equation stabilized my erratic orbit and made my recovery possible. 🙏
Jim, this means a lot to me. Truly.
When I write these pieces, I’m usually just sitting here talking to myself and to whatever small circle of souls happens to wander by. Knowing that my words live in the same daily orbit as your meditation, your conversations with your wife and sister, and VMB feels like being invited into your inner room. That’s not a small thing. I don’t take it lightly.
What you shared about alcohol and that crisis point, that place where you realized it might not just take you but take others with you, that’s holy ground to me. Not in the religious sense, in the human one. There is something fiercely honest about a person who can say, out loud, “I needed a power greater than myself” and then keep following that thread instead of pretending they muscled through on their own.
I love the way you described that question: “What came before the Big Bang?” I’ve sat with that too, more than once. Not because I thought it would give me a neat answer, but because it rearranges the scale of the room. You stare into that kind of mystery long enough and all the noise we make down here, all the puffed up certainty and tribal chest beating, starts to look very small and very temporary.
For me, thinking about that “before” has never solved anything in the way a scientist might like, but it has given me something quieter and more enduring. Perspective. Comfort in the unknown. A strange kind of companionship with mystery itself. I don’t believe in a God who keeps ledgers, but I do believe there is something real in that space where your love of science meets your reverence for what cannot be measured. You called it worship of the mystery. I think that is as honest a faith as any I have heard.
You also put your finger on something I see in a lot of us who grew up around boilerplate religion. The scripts about “faith” felt hollow because they were mostly demands for agreement, not invitations to wonder. You took the long way around. You let the crisis strip you down to the studs. You walked back into life with science still in your bones and the unknowable now sitting at your table. That is not a collapse of reason. That is reason finally making room for the rest of being human.
What I hear in your note is a kind of hard-won equilibrium. You did not abandon your mind to get sober. You did not surrender your curiosity. You added something. That mysterious first cause, that presence before the beginning, that ungraspable something that does not need our definitions in order to be real. And somehow, that addition steadied the orbit. That makes deep sense to me.
I move through the world as a secular humanist and a faith friend. I do not need to solve the nature of the universe in order to stand alongside someone who has felt it move under their feet. What matters to me is exactly what you just modeled. Humility. Curiosity. A willingness to admit that certainty alone could not save you, and that the unknowable had a role in your healing.
I am grateful you let me see that part of your story. And I am quietly glad that whatever I am doing on the page has earned a place in your daily rotation, next to the people and practices that keep you grounded. That feels like the best kind of affirmation, not of me as a writer, but of the conversation we are all trying to have with this baffling, beautiful, dangerous life.
So I will keep writing from this odd crossroads where science, mystery, grief, and stubborn hope all sit together. And I am glad to know you are out there, reading, orbit steady, mind alive, heart in on the deal.
Thank you for letting me walk a little of this pilgrimage with you.
Thank you Dino! Happy holidays & your time away! Hope you enjoy a blessed break & happy Thanksgiving, my friend - I give thanks for you & your Light Against Empire to calm the chaos of our world, and for your exceptional gift of beautiful writing to explain it all through science & faith, in a truly humane way!
Thank you Dino. I have struggled with this for many years as well.