If you decided to ask me who my favorite evangelist is, I would have an answer for you.

I do not know why you would ask me such a question.

Perhaps we might be stuck in an elevator somewhere, or waiting for a train, and you're just trying to make conversation.  Maybe you've been studying religion or you just saw a documentary on Jack Lalanne.  I do not know why you ask the strange questions that you do, but I always listen to them and think about them. I really do try to give you the most true answer that I can articulate.  

I hope that this is good enough.

My answer starts out with a bit of a stutter.  My first favorite evangelist isn't really a person the way you and I are.  It takes the voice of one man and the hands and skill of others and the ideas of yet another to make Yoda exist.  But his message to me always boiled down to this:  "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." Which always seemed to mean, "There is so much more to everything than what we can perceive." and this has set me a viewpoint on the world that has offered me great beauty and wonder.

But there is a person who is something like Yoda (even if his voice sounds more Jim Henson than Frank Oz) who influenced my life and my understanding of the world around me.  Carl Sagan made a great effort to make the wonders of the universe accessible to as many people as possible.  Watching his shows, one gets a sense that the man is just about to scream like a little girl and dance around the room because he's just so darn excited about all of the great wonders that are out there.  

He is so invested and interested in his beloved science that it becomes almost impossible not to invest something while watching him.  It becomes almost impossible not to take something away from those lectures and demonstrations.  It becomes almost unthinkable to consider oneself apart from the wonders of the universe.

A man named John Boswell started The Symphony of Science http://www.symphonyofscience.com/ to blend the wonder and joy of science that we see in Carl Sagan and several of his companions with music.  The result is enough to make me feel how Dr. Ellie Arroway must have felt when she said, "They should have sent a poet."

Consider this, please, and take a moment to let your inner luminous being dance in the light of the possible.