Stargazing Puts Human Religious Squabbles into Eternal Perspective

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“The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” 

– Psalm 19:1 NRSV

I spent 45 minutes star watching last night. It’s always amazing to watch the night sky as the sun sets and stars begin to appear.

I was re-orienting myself to the early night sky and finding my way around. Vega (a very bright star in the constellation Lyra) blazed away. It appears as a blue-white star.

Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Booetes, appears orange/red.

The “summer triad” of stars includes Vega, Deneb and Altair. All one needs to do is find Vega (a piece of cake), then using a pair of binoculars which has good light gathering capabilities (I use 7x50 binoculars) the other two stars in the triangle appear easily.

I am “star struck” when I view the night sky. I note it’s beauty and am awestruck by what I see. I listen to the silence (which is hard because we live scant yards from Indiana State Road 28, and have spurts of traffic, which decrease at night). I look for satellites, stars, constellations and planets. I see aircraft flying in and out from Indianapolis, just one hour south of us.

I have never seen anything in the night sky which isn’t normally there. I’ve seen comets, Hale Bopp, Halley (not Haley), and Ikeya-Seki).

It’s amazing that our ancestors, using their imaginations, saw mythological figures in the sky, and used their stars to navigate.

The nearest star to us is Proxima Centauri, 4.24 light years away in the constellation Centaurus.

I cannot accept that the universe (multiverse) is an accident. Genesis tells us that God “spoke” everything into being, creating through God’s Word.

As human beings words call forth new understandings in us and open our minds to possibilities previously unconsidered.

We are “called” into newness, something created which we could not “see” before. That is nothing less than wondrous. We see it happen in our children and grandchildren.

We are in “the infancy” stages of understanding life and how everything is inter-connected. Newtonian physics, born during the machine age, with its mechanicality has been replaced with a viewpoint built around energy, waves, and packets (quantum physics). It has produced new understandings with complexities we are only beginning to understand. I have found Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time, to be very helpful. He speaks of “string theory,” dark matter and black holes or singularities.

Will we ever travel to the stars? I don’t know. There are so many challenges and problems to solve on earth. How do we safeguard life here and now? How can we put an end to hunger, and cope with climate change? Can we quit killing one another through wars?

I am a science fiction fan. Half of American citizens could care less for this genre. But, consider, that the “flip phone” is very similar to the communicators used in Star Trek the Original Series.

Consider that the human race’s ability to “dream” has led us to develop new technologies not conceived of in the 1800’s.

I have been forever impacted by Robert Kennedy’s statement: “There are those who look at things the way they are and ask…..why? I dream of things that never were and ask, “why not?” (Quoting George Bernard Shaw).

Because God’s Spirit creates possibilities and actualities our hearts and minds become open to new dreams. Teilhard de Chardin’s mystical understanding of the universe, God and the human race, can cause us to see in new ways. His book, The Phenomenon of Man, introduces us to new terms, such as hominisation, Omega Point, and “the noosphere.”

My spiritual director, Dwight Judy, has spoken with me numerous times about Teilhard. In Teilhard’s thought there is a profound connection in the entire human race, derived from the Greek word, “nous” which means “mind.”

Teilhard more than suggests that our connection as human beings is profoundly subtle, but very real.

Teilhard was a Roman Catholic priest and a paleontologist. His understandings were not couched in the language or orthodoxy. But, to me, he evinces a hopeful state, and most of all, the reality of new possibilities.

In this present moment, culture wars can be reframed if we look at what is happening through Teilhard’s framework of thought.

Conservatives conserve, and can be driven by fears of what they may lose. Progressives and liberals tend to focus on liberation and what God is “calling forth.”

This present tension in our nation and across the globe can be understood through this “lens.”

Quite frankly, one of my fears is that the unknown can be looked upon through fear, rather than through hope or possibilities. I fear the development of totalitarianism and a government led by a “leader,” or through massive government control.

But, God’s Word, ever creates and calls forth new possibilities.

I will leave you with a couple of Teilhard quotes:

“The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.”

“Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

I offer my thoughts to conservatives who may be afraid, and to progressives who may, at times, come across as too cocksure of their “truth.”

Your brother, Chris

The Rev. Chris Madison is a retired clergy member of the Indiana Annual Conference and a former chaplain at Franciscan Health. This post is republished with permission from his Facebook page. To republish this content elsewhere, please contact the author.