For Small Creatures Such as We
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
"A charming book, ringing with the joy of existence." -- Richard Dawkins "This lyrical exploration of how we can find beauty in the natural world comes from the daughter of Carl Sagan . . . A wonderful gift for your favorite reader." --Good Housekeeping 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, 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 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.
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This is a sweet little book that is mostly about Sasha Sagan's life and gratitude to her parents, Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan. It is clearly inspired by their work: writing clearly and spaciously about how the marvels of science and the rational world can invoke a sense of awe and spirituality and exploring a non-supernatural intention for religion and connection.
It was interesting to me that for a book about atheism, it is also a profoundly Jewish book. When Sasha talks about the atheists that found meaning in awe in the scientific world being people like her father, Einstein and Feynman, it's not a coincidence that these are all Jewish atheists. To riff on a classic Jewish joke: the G-d they don't believe in is specifically the Jewish G-d. This is important because so many atheists in America are culturally Christian and talk about atheism in a way that is specifically about rejecting Christianity. For Jews, participation in ritual life is not predicated on belief, and the blending of ritual and spirituality with atheism is simpler. This is clear when Sagan talks about her atheistic approaches to Shabbat, Passover and other Jewish traditions.
A trainee came to my office in tears a few years ago, to ask how to move forward in a world where we are constantly caring for sick and sometimes dying children. The only thing I could tell him was that religion was the technology that humanity had invented and refined over millenia to deal with hardship and that using this technology did not require any belief, just a willingness to trust that feeling part of something larger, finding rituals that take us out of the day-to-day and being in community. Sasha Sagan paints a way to do this in a world where many people have religious trauma, and/or do not hold supernatural beliefs, reverse engineering the technology to include: textures of time that relate to the seasons/days of the week/times of day, moments for rest and recuperation, moments for self-denial and empathy for those with less abundance, moments for joy and grief and awareness of being alive and this being a temporary state.
It is more of a reflective piece than a practical piece, but I enjoyed it and will come back to it.
Half memoir/personal essays, half list of rituals around certain topics around the world, 100% wonder at life on earth. It was fine but not quite what I was looking for.
