Most people seem to regard ultimate questions, metaphysics or "the cosmic perspective" as irrelevant frills (for people with too little to do, too much time on their hands) at best - but more likely as delusional nonsense, and something that ought to be avoided.
The subject certainly is avoided (except to warn against it) in all of mainstream public life.
My understanding is that this avoidance is very obvious, is like a veering away from somewhere that people are actively trying not to confront.
The elephant in the room is that what people want, do talk about - is pointless. That is an implicit fact; and as such the choice is between pointless "fun" and pointless misery - so it's all about fun.
And when life feels shallow, then depth is supposed to come from altruism, from fighting against bad things like racism, global warming; or fighting for the rights of officially-oppressed groups and their representatives.
But if life is indeed pointless?... Or is "meaning and purpose" supposed to arise from striving to make other peoples' pointless existences more fun and more comfortable? I guess this is supposed to be how it works - but, of course, it doesn't work.
When things are pointless, well they are pointless - and manipulating our temporary emotions or feelings doesn't affect that horrible fact.
The assumption seems to be that there are no answers, and cannot be any answers to The Big Questions. Philosophy has even defined itself in terms of failing to answer the perennial questions; but just wittering-on about them, anyway!
So we should not waste time on raising the big questions... It can only make us depressed.
What about religion, what about Christianity, what about churches?
Well, religion is about churches, and churches are about sticking to list of rules (or not sticking to them, but pretending anyway) - which is just more of the same stuff we get plenty of elsewhere; and about "worship".
Worship is supposedly what God (or the gods) wants us to do. And this is supposed to please (or appease) God, and make us take a better perspective on life... It doesn't, of course; but why should it - even in principle? Worship does not address the question of ultimates, of what it is all about?
From this angle, church is just part of the colossal system of evasion in which we live; just another way of whiling away our pointless, mayfly lives until we crumple and die (and after we die... more of the same worship stuff; but forever).
If not, then what? What actually would, or at least could, be helpful?
My answer is: reminders of the real cosmic perspective. So that our mundane lives can be seen (albeit only temporarily, but maybe something will last) in their place in the scheme of things.
A reminder of where we are from, where we are going; and what positive relevance our current lives have for all this.
(I say positive relevance, because that is something grossly lacking. Avoiding stuff, self-sacrifice etc is meaningless - unless there are positive and permanent things we ought to be doing.
It is useful, fundamentally valuable, for us to know our lives in terms of what we personally are positively we are supposed to achieve in them.
A cosmic perspective for the here-and-now and the mundane.
That would seem like a valid activity for religion - whether in terms of teaching, reading, conversation - or of formal church rituals and the like.
