Going beyond "wow!"
I was asked to deliver the "mesage" - sermon - at Allen's Neck Friends Meeting Sunday on the broad subject of space. I wrote it out - then delivered as much of it as I could in an informal manner, using the written text as a rough guide - so I said some things that aren't here, and didn't say a few things that are, but stuck pretty close to this message. here's my text:
A few hours ago I received an email from Cara, a young woman who, with her 9-year-old daughter, has been visiting Driftway Observatory in the past couple of months.
When she was out earlier this week pointing one of the telescopes at Jupiter, she was excited to see “all five moons.”
FIVE I said – oh no – there are only four. She stepped back and I looked through the telescope she was using – sure enough, there were five “moons” where there were supposed to be four.
Cool. It was a rare event that took me by surprise. Suddenly, as viewed from Earth, Jupiter’s four bright moons had been joined by a distant star making it look like there were five. Well, actually six, although the sixth one was significantly dimmer.
Referring to this incident, Cara wrote:
Amazement? Yes. This is what I call the “wow” factor. It’s fun and its real and it happens often – but it is only the beginning of what I am trying to do. My goal is to go beyond “wow!”
My favorite part was when we saw the extra "moons " of Jupiter and YOU were excited/baffled, etc. So far it seems we have been the ones amazed at these new sights and I thought it was great to see you in similar amazement . . .
But Cara’s remarks made me feel like Porky Pine – the sour-faced character in the Comic strip Pogo, who always looks pretty gloomy. In an attempt to convince folks he was really a bundle of laughs inside, Porky Pine started going around with a stethoscope, inviting them to listen to his insides with the stethoscope so they could hear the raucous laughter.
Maybe that’s what I need to do. If you could place a stethoscope to my soul on a starry night, I’m sure the sounds would be deafening. But it is an excitement that goes beyond words. It is an experience – as they say – that is ineffable. It is, in a word, transcendent.
And that’s where I would like us to go this morning.
“Wow!” is neat. It’s a nice place to be.
But “Wow” is only a first step. What I really want to do is much more ambitious. I want to experience the ineffable. I want to go to that point where we experience something so special that words fail us. And, of course, because it is ineffable I can’t tell you about it. And I can’t draw you a road map. It would be outrageously arrogant for me to be pretending to lead you there.
But what I may be able to do is create a small experience which may put you into a mode where the ineffable touches you, where for a brief moment, you feel a flash of deep knowing – a brief caress from the hand of God.
Is that too lofty a goal? Almost assuredly, it is. But we still should try. So I submit that no matter how far out of reach it may be, the effort is worth it. Not my effort – of course – yours. This is about you and the universe.
And it starts, rather mundanely, with you reaching into a bag and pulling out a tiny ball of lead. Shotgun shot, really. Don’t eat it, please. And don’t give it to a child who may put it into his or her mouth. But please take one and hold it for now.
-- Bren passes around a couple of cloth bags with lead shot in them so everyone gets a tiny piece of lead -
Einstein said:
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."
“Rapt in awe.”
I love that – that’s beyond wow. It’s the next step.
But Einstein talks of it being the source of all art and science. I think it’s more. I think it is the source of a spiritual awakening that goes under many names.
Tony DeMello, a Jesuit priest raised in India and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, calls it simply “awareness.”
The Navaho Indians – if I am to believe mystery writer Tony Hillerman- see it as “harmony” and have elaborate ceremonies that go on for days and are designed to restore our balance with the universe.
Some Christians call it “amazing grace”
And I can still hear my father’s voice (he was an Episcopal minister) intoning a blessing from the Anglican prayer book – “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding. . .”
That’s what I want for myself – peace, grace, harmony – awareness. That’s the uncharted territory that lies beyond “wow!”
As I said – there are many paths – and there are no paths. In the final analysis you do not find awareness – awareness, the peace of God, grace, a sense of overwhelming harmony - finds you.
But I do believe that while you can’t chart a path, you can open doors – you can clear away the clutter, and you can make yourself an easy and willing receptor. And that’s where I turn to the stars.
Oh don’t get me wrong. Astronomy isn’t important in itself. You could achieve the same thing by turning to butterflies, flowers, or the person seated next to you. But astronomy Is my path of choice because it is dramatic - it stretches our common senses and common experience to the breaking point.
I think the Psalmist felt this when he wrote:
“The heavens declare the glory of God . . .Day unto day utterreth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.”
In astronomy the mind boggling is common place, the extraordinary, ordinary. Mind you, I think every thing is mind boggling. I think the fact that there is something, rather than nothing, is a miracle of incredible proportions. But it is hard to see these miracles in our every day experience because they are just that – our every day experiences. So we accept them and take them for granted.
When we turn to the heavens – to the night sky – though, we leave the ordinary behind. Most of us have little experience of it. We have a natural fear of the dark and in our modern civilization we surround ourselves with light. Our house are so well lit, that we can not see out the windows at night. We forget, that 100 years ago it was common to walk into a darkened room and notice the moonlight through a window, or perhaps a bright star or planet.
No more. Not only do we not walk into a dark room, flood lights come on automatically as we step out of doors at night, giving us a cone of light that hides the universe from us. Then we get into our cars and immediately turn on the lights. We simply do not experience the night. We carry the day with us – 24/7.
So going out deliberately to look at the stars is not commonplace for most people. Using small telescopes to reach millions of light years into the universe is definitely unusual. And when you start to grasp just a little of what you are seeing – well, that can result in an awakening – for some even a life-changing experience.
But it’s only the beginning because you immediately run into a wall I call the big numbers barrier. In astronomy we deal with numbers which quickly get into the silly range. We let them roll of our tongues glibly – and we use them in ways that are genuinely useful – useful if the goals is to understand the universe on an abstract basis. But they mask the ineffable.
We don’t experience the universe because the numbers get in the way. They lull us into a false sense of knowing. We know the moon is about a quarter million miles away – far, but anything less than a million we can imagine. The sun- our nearest and brightest star – is 93 million miles away. Doesn’t sound too bad – but hop into a passenger jet flying at 500 miles an hour –something many of you have done – and you’re going to have stay in that cabin for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for more than 21 years before you reach the sun – and that is something none of us have done and is very difficult to imagine.
And these are just baby steps.
So I try to take baby steps to begin to cut through the numbers and to give myself and others an experiential point of reference – which is why I asked you to pick out a piece of lead shot and contemplate it.
Please hold it in the palm of your hand, examine it – then close your eyes and try to imagine shrinking the earth down to the size of this piece of lead shot.
---------------------------done that? ---------
I know – it’s not easy. Only a few astronauts have had an experience of the whole earth. But give it a try.
Now if you shrink the earth down to that size, the sun – in comparison – becomes a ball about this size. (hold up 10-inch ball.)
If you took 109 of your tiny “earths” and put them in a straight row, they would just about equal the diameter of this ball – the sun.
One hundred and nine.
Doesn’t sound like that many. I mean, the sun is obviously large, but 109 times the diameter of the Earth? – I can deal with that.
But that too is deceiving. For the sun really is huge. And it burns up vast amounts of matter every second – it’s consuming itself and has been doing so for about 5 billion years – and it spews energy out into space in all directions at a prodigious rate and if it didn’t do so, we simply wouldn’t be here. Nor would any other living thing.
So where does all that matter come from? Consider this.
Look at the lead shot in your hand – look at this ball.
How many of those lead shots do you think would fit inside it? One thousand? Ten thousand? 100 thousand?
How about a million? That’s right, a million. That’s how many planets the size of Earth would fit inside the sun. And that’s huge.
If you were going to take those lead shot and put one of them inside this ball every second and if you did that non-stop for every second of every minute of every hour of every day – no breaks for sleep, the bathroom, or meals – then you would get this ball filled in about 11 days!
What I’m trying to say is the sun consists of a huge amount of matter.
So does the earth.
But that’s deceiving. Again – think about the ball – think volume! Don’t think in linear terms – diameters can mislead you.
Now to get things into proportion, take your little piece of lead – no, don’t really do this – but imagine taking your little piece of lead and standing in the parking lot about half way to the road. Now look back here and see the sun. And now try to imagine the huge volume of space in which the only matter there is are a few tiny lead balls – Earth, Venus, Mercury – and this 10-inch Sun. That’s it, in all that space.
More than 99 percent of the matter in our entire solar system is in the Sun. One planet – Jupiter – has most of the rest. And what’s left is ton of apparent emptiness.
Which is something to contemplate. But the emptiness – the nothingness – does not stop there.
Let’s hop in our jet again. But this time, instead of flying to the sun, we’ll pretend we’re operating on the scale of the earth you hold in your hands and the sun I hold in my hands. And we will go on a search for the next Sun – the next 10 inch ball. And we’ll need the plane because the next 10 inch ball isn’t in the parking lot. It’s not at the Dartmouth Mall, or Fall River, or even New York.
And no, it’s not in Hollywood.
We would have to fly at 500 miles an hour for 10 hours – out to Honolulu – before we would find another 10-inch ball representing the next nearest star.
And as that sinks in, try to imagine the volume of space we are talking about and how very little there is in that volume of space. (I calculated it and came up with something like 66 million cubic miles, a number I can only begin to imagine – and remember, we’re talking about our scale model with 10-inch suns!.)
The lesson is simple. Matter is rare stuff. Very rare stuff and as such, precious beyond words.
But there’s more. When we start going the other direction – we start digging into matter – guess what we find. Atoms. Everything consists of atoms. And when we look at an atom, guess what we find – mostly empty space.
So matter is really rare, and what appears to be empty space is common, and what little matter there is, is all held together by invisible force fields – the two nuclear forces, the eletromagnetic force – and that most mysterious force of all – gravity – which is by far the weakest of the forces – and yet dominates the universe.
So does all this go beyond “wow” ?
Maybe. Only you can answer that. And I don’t suggest you try to answer it now.
But I do suggest that if you think on it. If you meditate on it. If you let the reality sink in – then some day, some time – perhaps when you least expect it - it will sneak up on you and for a few precious moments it will grab hold of you, and it will all be absolutely, stunningly, clear . . .
I had such a moment for the first time about 40 years ago. It was 3 am of a summer morning and I was standing alone at my small telescope soaking in the photons from the Adromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away. That number, as I have said, is in the silly range. We have no experiential knowledge of it because it doesn't come close to anything we experience - and yet, suddenly, without warning I knew - knew in the wonderful, deep Biblical sense of that word - how far away the Andromeda Galaxy was. And it scared the hell out of me. I left the telescope where it was, went to the house, and directly to bed, pulling the covers tight around me. But as fearful as it was, it was also special beyond words. It was my first contact with the ineffable, the transcendent. And since then I have made steady, but painfully slow progress, towards repeating such experiences.
You can too - and when you do, you will at the least know what Einstein meant when he said that those “who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe” are as good as dead.
For you will never be more alive than you are at the moment the ineffably mysterious grabs hold of you.