I love Loren Eiseley. Reading his meditations on science gave me early evidence that the gulf between religion and science can be bridged by humble ambassadors of both camps. I was so happy when Gaye Koppas shared the following reading in our Tuesday Bible Class.
“I am treading deeper and deeper into leaves and silence. I see more faces watching, non-human faces. Ironically, I who profess no religion find the whole of my life a religious pilgrimage.”
- “The religious forms of the present leave me unmoved. My eye is round, open, and undomesticated as an owl’s in a primeval forest — a world that for me has never truly departed.”
- “Like the toad in my shirt we were in the hands of God, but we could not feel him; he was beyond us, totally and terribly beyond our limited- senses.”
“(Humankind) is not as other creatures and. . . without the sense of the holy, without compassion, (our) brain can become a gray stalking horror –” -Loren Eiseley
By the word “religion” Loren Eiseley surely did not mean religion in any orthodox sense. He did not believe in any kind of God, but he did not hide his sense of reverence for fear that someone would accuse him of supernaturalism. He was a living expression of Epictetus’ saying that the rational soul must not only think of its source, but also sing of it.