The Starry Sky

I most recently encountered the idea in F. C. Happold's Religious Faith and Twentieth-Century Man.  Like a number of other thoughtful Christian writers over the past half-century, Happold (a modern mystic ) has commented upon the contrast between the cosmology of Biblical times and the one provided by our contemporary astronomy.  These writers know that the Bible was not meant to be science.  Nevertheless, they raise the question of whether "modern man's" way of thinking about the world is now so different that we cannot respond spiritually in a way paralleling that of people several centuries ago.  They point out how we now have detailed scientific knowledge of the cosmos, and ask if the kind of religious sentiment felt by people centuries ago is not diminished in contrast.

But I wonder.  I recognize that there has been an immense change in our scientific knowledge of the cosmos... but still I wonder.  I wonder whether it is our increased knowledge of astronomy that poses the problem, or perhaps something else.  I wonder if the challenge doesn't come more from some side effects of our scientific technology.

In Biblical times, people did not know about light-years of distance, or about the millions of galaxies, or about an expanding universe.  Those people could, however, simply look up at the sky at night and see more stars than anyone could count.  The stars were to them as innumerable as the grains of sand upon the shore (Gen. 22:17).  And those people's response could be sacred awe.

Today, most people rarely have the same experience, but I do not think it is because our scientific knowledge is so much greater.  It is instead because our firsthand experience of the night sky is so limited.  When we today look up at the sky at night, we most likely see only a fraction of the number of stars Biblical man saw.  All the ambient city lights prevent us from seeing a black-velvet background of sky studded with stars beyond anyone's counting.

Even if there were not so many electric lights outside to interfere, would that mean there wouldn't still be another problem?  Wouldn't all our technological temptations (TV., computers, and cellphones) distract us?  Even when there are a fair number of stars visible, how often do you see people in U.S. cities pause from their activities to look up and survey the starry night sky?

time exposure of night sky

Even if I cannot see as many stars as I would like to, I still like to look up and see as many as I can -- and I find it so wondrous!  That is why I like to periodically leaf through my book of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems and read the opening lines of "The Starlight Night."  Those lines read:  

"Look at the stars!  look, look up at the skies!

O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!

The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!"

~~~

Do you have a favorite remembrance of having experienced the starry sky?

Degrees of Separation

"The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw -- and knew I saw -- 
all things in God, and God in all things.” 

 (Mechthild of Magdeburg, 13th cent.)

"They live in wisdom who see themselves in all and all in them."

(The Bhagavad Gita, 3rd cent, B.C.E.)

In their origins, these quotations, are separated by centuries, by cultures, and by miles of geography.  But they are of the same spirit.  Not too long ago, I recalled these memorable lines because I experienced some difficult communication between myself and a friend, causing us to both feel painfully the inescapable differences in our perspectives.

Quotations similar to these can be found in all of the world's great faith-traditions.  Such reminders of a fundamental unity endure because we humans know all too well how easily two friends, two partners, or two family members can become alienated.  (Not to mention the persistent barriers of nationality, ethnicity, and culture.)

Diagram of 6 degrees of separation

Over the past several years, the phrase "six degrees of separation" has entered our vocabulary. The supposition behind that phrase is that, beginning with any person, a series of six connections of some sort can be drawn linking that person to any other person.  (For example: Am I only six degrees from a movie star, if I include the cities I've lived in, and include someone who went to the movie star's high school?)  I wonder if the popularity of trying to find such 6-link chains may come in part from our living in ever-larger cities, causing us to be surrounded by more and more strangers.

The great mystics, such as the Christian Mechthild of Magdeburg and the author of that quote from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, see the world in a somewhat different way:  They say that if we see more deeply into reality, the number of degrees of separation is zero!

Here is where the critics of mysticism (whether religious or secular critics) are easily confused. Critics frequently dismiss mysticism by saying that mystics are impractical and out of touch with everyday reality.  If taken literally, a mystics claim that all is "one" seems obviously false.  For, after all, I can see with my eyes that there are two people right in front of me.  The mystics, however, lived lives just as real and practical as other people.  The difference was that they came to perceive a hidden unity that made the forms of separation shallow in comparison.

all a part of one universe
(16th-century drawing)

Modern science has put a new twist on this age-old dispute between the mystical and the commonplace viewpoints. Modern science, with its narrative of how our universe was born and evolved to us today, draws an actual, physical chain of links connecting everything  -- alienated people, animals, plants, and the inanimate.  As the contemporary Christian writer Matthew Fox explains:  " [The] very elements of which we are composed were in fact prepared billions of years ago in the stars themselves."

~~~

Do you have some way of handling alienation between you and someone else when it occurs?

(The Mechthild quote is taken from Meditations with Mechtild of Magdeburg, ed. Sue Woodruff, © 1982.  p. 42.)
(The passage [2:55] from The Bhagavad Gita is from the translation of Eknath Easwaran, © 1985.)

(The map of the universe by Thomas Digges is in the Public Domain because it is over 70 yrs. old.)

Of Cattle and Cows

Most children in the U.S. today have few opportunities to see sizable animals other than their pets without going to a zoo. However, one way we city folk do get a glimpse of non-zoo animals is by taking a drive in the countryside.  Of all the animals we can spot through a car window at 65 mph, the most likely are cattle and cows.  Although in terms of domesticated animals raised for food worldwide, goats do outnumber bovine, it is these larger, lumbering cattle and cows that dominate in the U.S.  Unfortunately, they usually get mentioned in the news media only when a controversy arises about the slaughter of cattle for beef.  Whether I choose vegetarianism or not, I would like to claim equal time for reflecting upon them with gratitude.  Especially time to reflect upon milk.

It was indeed the dairy cows we saw more often when I grew up in Wisconsin  At that time, containers of Borden's milk were conspicuously adorned with the face of "Elsie the Cow."  It was a cartoon drawing of Elsie smiling broadly, so happy was she to provide us her milk.  Today, Elsie is much less noticeable on the carton.   All the brands of milk other than Borden's in one grocery store I've checked had no picture of a cow on the container.  Also, Carnation no longer tells us their milk comes from cows.  ("Contented cows," they used to say.)  You might think that the milk was synthesized by humans.

Krishna and milk-maidens with cow

It is in regard to this matter of milk and gratitude that one of the biggest misunderstandings between faith-traditions has occurred.  Our English language contains the phrase "sacred cow," meaning something that is protected unreasonably and illogically.  The phrase has its origins in a Western colonial attitude that looked upon the poorer people of India as being stupid for not slaughtering the cows, even when people were near starvation.  Westerners interpreted the taboo on killing cows as a misguided Hindu obstacle to advancement.  The truth was that Indians down through the centuries knew better.  If slaughtered, the cows would have been only a fleeting source of food (and not a convenient one without refrigeration).  Kept alive, the cow provided a life-giving stream of milk for years (as well as providing dung, which, when dried, was burned for fuel, thus preventing deforestation in an arid landscape).

Other cultural misunderstandings about milk have continued into the present.  Children have been encouraged to drink milk without an exception for lactose-intolerant children.  Those who have suffered most have been children of African-American descent because a genetic ability to digest cow's milk evolved in Europeans but not in people of Africa, where the landscape was not appropriate for fat dairy cows.

from The Seventh Seal

Nevertheless, it was a great shift in human history 8,000 years ago when people domesticated animals for milk, also leading to the development of nourishing yogurts and cheese.  In Ingmar Bergman's otherwise dark, existential movie The Seventh Seal, when the hero drinks from a restorative bowl of milk, sunlight reflected from the milk brightens his face.  Not a bad symbol, even though Elsie did not make it into the credits.

~~~

Are there ways you try to remain grateful for the food you eat?  What are those ways?

(The movie still from The Seventh Seal,

 © 1957 by A. B. Svensk Films, is used through Fair Use.)

Leaves Old and New

Having always been quite nearsighted, I could not appreciate trees as easily as I could appreciate leaves.  I could not readily identify which species a tree was from a distance, the way my parents could.  Nor could I see detail in the distant treetops.  But I could look at a leaf closely, even hold it in my hand, and feel its texture.

I am still fascinated by the shapes of leaves.  Not just the variety, but the way that each one looks like something else.  What child has not noticed the resemblance between a maple leaf and their own hand, even fitting their hand upon it?  Another leaf I examine (from what tree I do not know) looks like a spear.  Still another leaf has the outline of a scoop.  And the stiff, large leaf of the southern magnolia tree seems perfectly designed for fanning oneself during a hot southern summer.

To the botanist, the shape of the leaf tells a story about its tree having evolved to flourish in a particular environment.  Even without knowing the details about such variations, I can be amazed to know that it is within those thin leaves that plants magically convert carbon dioxide and water into solid material, thus enabling the plant to grow.  Green leaves are truly miniature factories powered by the sun.

I am fascinated not only by the shapes of leaves but also by their colors.  How many shades of green can there be?  Even more fascinating are the turnings of color as autumn comes.  Like an alarm clock that has gone off, the shock of seeing some trees no longer green can wake us up to the approaching winter.  The change in foliage can even make us think about our own use of time, and whether our time might be short.

In the author O. Henry's amusing story "The Cop and the Anthem," a dead leaf falling into the lap of the main character, a hobo, signals to him that he needs to make a change in his living arrangements in order to make it through the winter.  That warning, coupled with the moving chords of church music that waft outdoors, inspire the hobo to make a good change in his life -- "to turn over a new leaf," as we say.

As fall continues and winter gets even closer, the leaves we see on the ground change colors even more, becoming mottled, creating a quilt of yellows, browns, reds, and even purples.  The leaves are then ready to be recycled into the earth, to become the substance of plants and trees yet again.  The leaves also "turn over a new leaf."

With the passage of time, I am also probably reprocessing things from my past into my future, shedding some things as a way of growing new leaves.  But it is harder for me to see those changes happening in me than it is for me to observe the changes in leaves.  In leaves, I see life and change made manifest.

~~~

Do you have memories about leaves?  How do you experience your life changing with the cycle of a year?

Trees, Time, and Passing By

Trees rarely make the front page.  That did happen, however, in 2004 when Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize for her Green Belt Movement begun in Kenya.  Knowing a bit about ecology, I was not surprised to hear about the physical side effects that resulted from that movement's planting trees, such as cleaner streams due to reduced soil erosion.  What intrigued me more were the intangible benefits those trees brought.  For example, friendships between Kenyan women developed because, as they made their daily trips in the hot sun carrying water, they stopped to converse in the shade of trees.

As I have reflected about trees in general, I've concluded that the most enduring intangible benefits trees bring derive from the way they serve as tabernacles of time.  Many species of trees can have life spans longer than ours can ever reach.  Trees, therefore, help families and communities hold onto life-giving memories from generation to generation.  That role trees can serve is made explicit in these lines from the early 20th-century poet Stephen Vincent Benet as he describes Richmond, Virginia:

"The trees in the streets are old trees used to living with people,

Family trees that remember your grandfather's name."

In Sequoia Natl. Park in California, I stretched my neck far back to look up at a tree that was young and growing long before Jesus was born.  Such pine trees and sequoias help us transcend our normal sense of time.  We usually think of time in terms of human generations, but that is subjective and human-centered. The 20th-century American Buddhist poet Gary Snyder speaks to the relativity of time scales in this way:

"As the crickets' soft autumn hum

is to us,

so are we to the trees

as are they

to the rocks and the hills."

Compared to many long-living species of trees, we humans are just passing by.  We are to them passers-by in time, similar to the way we pass by a tree beside the sidewalk or walking path. In countries where people do not get virtually all their food from the grocery story, people can also be more aware of the other, tangible benefits those trees provide.  The Hindu Upadesa Tarangini brings together those tangible benefits with trees' intangible reminder that we are passers-by in the following benediction placed upon a tree:

"Oh tree!  You are standing on the path.  Live for a long time and be happy, because with your blossoms the cuckoo is happy, and with your pollen the bumblebees are happy, and passers by are happy with your fruits.  So live long!"

~~~

Is there any tree in particular that you remember? What is your memory of it?

(The Snyder poem is taken from

Buddhism and Ecology, ed. Mary Evelyn Tucker, et al., © 1997.)

(The Hindu blessing is taken from Hinduism and Ecology,
 by Ranchor Prime, © 1992.)