The eighth and final liturgical season, Viventibus Galaxia (Living Galaxies), stretches from mid-fall to the Winter Solstice. It covers the far future. When life spreads from star to star. Humanity may be left behind. Humanity may adaptively radiate. Life may become such a powerful force that it controls the paths of stars, slingshotting them around each other so that entire systems are thrust toward other galaxies. Life may become so powerful that it shapes the destiny of the universe. The four great advances of this time are interstellar life, the fate of humanity, intergalactic life and life as a shaper of the fate of the universe.
Here is [[Eric]]'s draft of the opening ceremony for the [[Weekly Service Calls]] during this season:
:Nothing ... still ... Nothing.
:And then ... <gasp> ... Something!
:Space! Time! Energy! Matter! Gravity!
:Galaxies coalesce.
:In one celestial nursery, Sol is born.
:Sol's story has begun .. but it is only the beginning.
:The story continues with life, starfaring life,
:Green fire spreading and flowering through the galaxy!
:Next comes the chapter about the fate of humanity, the first spacefaring species.
:Does it pass into the fossil record?
:Or does it adaptively radiate into an unimaginable diversity of forms?
:Then will come intergalactic life!
:The power to control star systems.
:The power to sail them across the dark intergalactic seas!
:Finally, life may come to control the fate of all!
:Turning dark energy into matter,
:Freely available to all living creatures.
:Life. Humanity. Living galaxies. The fate of the universe.
:From nothing ... Something else!
=== Discussion ===
[[Ben]]: Just one bit of ambivalence about the eighth season: Is the idea of moving a star system across intergalactic space really in accord with our values, or is it more in the direction of the techno-libertarian “we will be gods” mindset? I admit that talking more generically about “travel between galaxies” wouldn’t evoke nearly the same sense of wonder. Speaking of sense of wonder, this season may need a bit of language about just how vast the empty gulfs between stars and galaxies are, to give a sense of both the grandeur of the cosmos and the mighty challenges to be overcome.
[[Eric]]: Whether Life starts moving Star Systems across intergalactic space is something that is out of our control. It follows from the Upward Spiral that Life will gain abilities which we cannot foresee. The power and majesty of the deep future is that what seems Godlike today will be everyday to them. We have sent members of our species to another world. How godlike would that have been to Paleocene bird gliding between the Ocean and the Moon on a clear night? But how godlike would that bird have been to a Carboniferous land snail crawling along a fern below a sky filled with mountainous white clouds? And yet how godlike would that snail have seemed to a Devonian fish caught dying in a tide pool. At each step would the creatures in question have said, that lungs or wings or spacecraft were an abomination? An unthinkable departure from what has always been? A taking on of Godlike powers not deserved by the mere mortal beings? If a hundred billion years from now, Life learns to sail stars across the intergalactic void, if that is the result of the SolSeed Movement helping life reach into space now, and if there is a vestige of human DNA still present in those creatures so far into the future that now and the beginning of the universe are indistinguishably old, will anyone care that we hoped for it? The future by its very nature is a Pandora's box. Create a future for life and there will be no end to what results from it. That is what the upward spiral means. That is what 'ever growing possibilities' means. I think the words for the final season must include truly audacious possibilities or we are selling short what SolSeed (not the movement but the thriving mass of Life itself) can do. Its power is unimaginable and that is what makes it so completely worthy of reverence.