Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.
— Abraham Heschel
I think that every discovery of the world plunges us into jubilation, a radical amazement that tears apart the veil of triviality.
— Dorothee Soelle
When NASA released the first pictures from its new telescope yesterday, the world seemed to stop for a moment to gaze — and gasp — at that which has been hidden from us.
“Today, we present humanity with a groundbreaking new view of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope – a view the world has never seen before,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These images, including the deepest infrared view of our universe that has ever been taken, show us how Webb will help to uncover the answers to questions we don’t even yet know to ask; questions that will help us better understand our universe and humanity’s place within it.”
The photographs are beautiful — gas cliffs sheltering new born stars, a four-billion-year-old star cluster appearing to dance across a dark sky, a star shedding its dust toward all corners of the universe, and five galaxies of such luminosity that they seem to be angelic beings.
I cried.
Wonder. Jubilation. Those are the words of Abraham Heschel and Dorothee Soelle. Such things bring us human beings to our knees. As the Psalmist once cried out, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”
Awe is the first response to seeing the expanse of the heavens. And, as a scholar of religion, I’m fairly certain that’s the origin of religion itself. Some ancient ancestor of ours looked up at the night sky and said, “Wow.”
But there’s a second response as well — perspective. Looking at pictures of events from four billion or more years ago puts a different frame around our problems, adjusts our attention, and calls us to see our lives more clearly.
Yesterday’s news was also filled with an array of really bad stories. Fires in California threatening the world’s oldest trees. The horrible video of the Uvalde school shooting. Fallout from the abortion ruling. High gas and food prices. A black man’s body riddled with bullets. The January 6 hearings. Climate change, gun violence, the rights of women, inflation adding to economic inequality, racial violence, and the crisis of democracy — a single day in America.
The specifics may change over days, weeks, or months. But the news seems on a miserable gerbil wheel of the same stories over years — maybe even a decade or two. Nothing changes except the details in this endless groundhog day of despair. People are in a foul mood, unable to process the anger, fear, and pain because it comes at us so fast.
If I’m honest, living in this horrible cycle of suffering, even generally optimistic me has become increasingly like Job — the biblical character whose entire life is plagued with one terrible thing after another — in a culture of Jobs.
For my sighing comes like my bread,
and my groanings are poured out like water.
Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me,
and what I dread befalls me.
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest; but trouble comes.
The biblical book of Job is based on an ancient story about evil centered on a question: can faith survive the worst suffering imaginable? In more than thirty chapters, once-prosperous Job experiences the loss of his home, land, wealth, health, companions, and family. “My whole being loathes my life,” Job laments, “Why from the womb did You take me?” To heap misery upon misery, the three worst friends in recorded history try to cheer Job up by offering unwanted advice and lecturing him with the most inane theology imaginable. Job argues and rages, alternating between anguish and fury at his situation, his friends, himself, and God.
Finally, when things reach the emotional bottom, God — the Voice from the Whirlwind — speaks to Job’s complaint. The response begins with a question: “Where were you when I founded earth?”
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? . . .
Can you tie the bands of the Pleiades,
or loose Orion’s reins?
Can you bring constellations out in their season,
lead the Great Bear with its children?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you fix their rule on the earth?. . .
Who has placed in the hidden parts wisdom,
or who gave the mind understanding?
Who counted the skies in wisdom?
and the jars of the heavens who tilted,
when the dust melts to a mass
and the clods cling fast together?
And there it is: perspective. Lift your gaze, Job. Look to the stars.
We’d be wrong, however, if we think God is telling Job to simply stop complaining because God is all powerful. This isn’t a “shut up you foolish mortal and let me fix it” speech.
The Voice begins with the stars and extends its lyrical celebration to all of creation — from the birth of the cosmos to the birth of every animal, the courses of nature. In this hymn of the cosmos, God is birthing presence in and through all, from the far heavens to the smallest bird — everything is woven into divine wisdom.
The answer to suffering isn’t that Big God will defeat evil. The answer to suffering is that since the creation of the stars, sacred intention and presence is the very essence of existence. We are all of the same stuff — God-stuff, star-stuff, soil-stuff, us-stuff — and this knowledge is what finally vanquishes suffering and evil (“Behemoth” and “Leviathan” in Job). The complexity and beauty of the cosmos, the deep interrelation of everything, alive with God’s compassionate creativity, is what ultimately saves Job. He learns to see differently; his perspective changes. “By the ear’s rumor I heard of You,” Job cried out to God following the vision of creation, “and now my eye has seen You!”
In effect, suffering and evil are the gods that defeat us when we mortals forget the reality of creation and the vastness of the universe. When we lose the sense of our lives in the cosmic web. Only the Voice can call us back to the truth of things — we are part of something much larger than ourselves.
When NASA released the pictures, I couldn’t stop looking at them.
By the ear’s rumor I heard of You, and now my eye has seen You!
And, for just a short time, the universe seemed to reorder itself. I saw things differently, and I knew that more is afoot in the world than the machinations so breathlessly reported on cable news.
“Awe,” wrote Abraham Heschel, “enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.”
To truly see the universe is a great gift — and a transformative responsibility. In seeing, we widen the horizon of possibility of caring for each other, of committing ourselves to healing and peace, of living free from hatred and violence. When we see the very dust clouds in which our own world was born, the ancient stardust that may have fallen through space to make the earth and us puts things in perspective.
The “veil of triviality” has been rent. May we never go back to the old way of seeing.
Look to the stars.
INSPIRATION
I saw no Way—The Heavens were stitched—
I felt the Columns close—
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres—
I touched the Universe—
And back it slid—and I alone—
A Speck upon a Ball—
Went out upon Circumference—
Beyond the Dip of Bell—
— Emily Dickinson
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
— Walt Whitman
But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Written across the dark pages of the night,
the stars are words,
and we look up at them —
to try to understand what they write, we look at them
until not from these moments but from these
years of our lives,
if we read them into belief,
if we read them into unbelief,
the sentences are so large
what is small is lost from them
nor can we remember when it first was
one had the sound of the other.
But this is only
because we grow old and old and begin
to understand what they write.
— Pauline Hanson, from “Stars.” Please read the entire (and marvelous) poem HERE.
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Oh Diana, How adore your reflections on these perspective-jolting, game-changing photos!! I had many thoughts swirling but so mixed they were wiht the sheer awe and wonder of it all. I could never get the pen to move over the paper!! But you did, so beautifully and magnificently. I wish this was published into a small booklet with your photo, and available in time for gift giving this holiday season. You’ve truly created a beautiful treasure for all who are seeing and experiencing in varying degrees so much fear, sorrow and weeping. Just like the parable of the disciples fishing in in the boat they cast their nets to one side and found themselves empty. Jesus directs them to turn their attention to the other side, and everything changes. Your reflections so graciously invite the reader to shift directions, that’s a gift that keeps on giving, Thank you ever so much for naming and claiming so much for us all.
As I looked at the amazing Webb pictures, I marveled most at the fact that my wife and I were sitting calmly in our comfortable living room without any sensation of movement or cosmic action. A result of all the "holy commotion" was two people very quietly enjoying being together with no sensation of vast time and violent space and no thought of the journey of evolving from star dust. As we put the newspaper aside we talk of the best way to clean a dishwasher!! - Doug Carpenter