MAYBE WE ARE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE.

I am sitting there at 3:00 a.m., comfortable in my rocker-recliner, watching a Samsung television after just returning from a bathroom break, when something on YouTube catches my eye. It was an excellent 20 minutes on why humans would never be able to travel long distances in space, because we were not designed by nature to do so.

This program got me thinking in my Lectio Divina prayer about God and how we find ourselves, as a race, able to even contemplate such a journey to the stars, as did early pioneers in the US, who wondered about what lies beyond the horizon. The late Joel Barker, himself a bit of a pioneer in his approach to trends and future thinking, spoke of humans as either pioneers or settlers. Pioneers are those who don’t yet have a clear idea of a better future for themselves but will create new pathways (going down many wrong ways to find the one way through), fighting elements of heat, cold, draught, and floods to keep moving to that promised land, no matter what the cost. Settlers come after the pioneers and reap the benefits of knowing the way, discerning what is true from what is false along the journey, until they reach what they hope is the life they heard about from the pioneers. One does the work, one reaps the rewards of those who have gone before them.

As is usual, when I place myself in the presence of Christ and ask the Holy Spirit to give me what I need, the following ideas popped into my mind. I share them with you, as I always do, so you can make out what you can.

MAYBE WE ARE LOOKING AT SPACE TRAVEL IN THE WRONG WAY USING THE WRONG ASSUMPTIONS.

My particular assumptions, which have grown in complexity and consciousness while I have accumulated data with which I try to determine the purpose of life and my individual purpose within that purpose, are that evolution evolves, as sure as matter and mind. This leads me to suspect that there is another level of evolution humans must make to bring them to the fullness for which they exist at all. What follows are some points about this ongoing thought process.

• Wonder if there is a way to travel through space and time and go beyond the limitations of human nature?
• Wonder if the one who created DNA did not leave us orphans but built it in a way to conquer matter and mind, to move toward a final evolution of what matter becomes?
• Wonder if, to access this way, humans have to know how to conquer their own deficiencies and harness what is within themselves with their qualities of reason and free choice, to move to that next level of evolution.
• Wonder if we were made to travel to the stars (a future Omega Point, according to Teilhard de Chardin) and are made of star stuff, with God’s DNA in each element of matter, pointing inexorably toward an Omega we cannot see but know is there?
• Wonder if our time on Earth, far from being rich, or famous, or having power over others, is to learn to probe the depths of our inner self, where the answers to the real question of space travel might lie?
• Wonder if God knew that we might try for the stars because they are there, and eventually develop technologies that would give us some possibilities for traveling in space, but lack that final element of the sustainability of time and matter. The distances are so vast that, with current and maybe even future developments, we had to try to pioneer going beyond our earthly cocoon of life, but finally concluded that there must be another way to travel to the stars.
• Wonder if God gave humans reason (and not other life forms anywhere in the known or unknown universe) to allow us to reach for the stars, but conclude that life can’t exist outside of Earth (at least for the time being), because we cannot overcome the limitation of our nature?
• Wonder if God saw humans were floundering in applying all types of purposes to life and got some right, but needed more direction?
• Wonder if God communicated through signs and symbols in the hearts and minds of a people to begin their astronaut training so they could survive a journey to the next level of human evolution. Such is the promise of God that He adopted a tribe to act as a test project for all of humanity.
• Wonder if God saw that his words were being heard, but they could not be translated to all humanity without help?
• Wonder if God decided to send Himself in the person of the Son made flesh to SHOW us how to use the words of old to prepare a way that would truly be specific and a roadmap to surviving the limitations of human nature to be able to move to a higher evolution that would enable all those who knew how to do it with the transition from human life to supernatural life with God in a space where there is no time and sin (limitations and deficiencies).
• Wonder if Jesus, the Son of God, Savior gave us not only the way to do it but the truth to know and love as the beginning of their training for Heaven to live in a place where humans can thrive after their transition from death?
• Wonder if we have everything we need to prepare ourselves to exist in this place prepared for us by the Father, where we will be with those we love and are linked through our prayers and wills with each other?
• Wonder if Jesus gave us a way that communicates what is true with the authority and energy of God to humans and the Catholic Church, to preserve that way of the cross down through each generation, protecting the faithful from error, despite their being prone to sin and abandonment of God.
• Wonder if Earth, thinking about the Fermi Paradox, is the only life anywhere, and that all we need to do is to learn how to tame our wills to listen to Jesus with the “ear of the heart,” so that He is the way to travel to Heaven using the truths that he shows us to live a life here on Earth in preparation for the one that our evolution has developed for us.
• Wonder if Jesus is the key that unlocks all those limitations we have about space travel and surviving in an artificial gas atmosphere without mistakes, to conquer death so that we can truly travel as evolution is pulling us, toward Omega.

The question becomes: You know you are going to die: now what?

It is all there, all we need; it is free, but at the cost of losing your old life to begin astronaut training.

Now is the time. Now is the acceptable hour. Why are you waiting? Are you a pioneer with your humanity or a settler?

Copyright 2026. Michael Conrad, Ed.D., The Center for Contemplative Practice. All Rights Reserved.