The other day, a friend having read my previous blog where I quote Carl Sagan without any comment, wondered, "Why no comment?" What could I say? What more could I add? Very succinctly, Sagan had said it all. One considers the immensity of time and space and one is lost for words and left with a sense of the numinous, the misterium tremendum. With a dramatic force of words and imagery Sagan ponders our apparent insignificance against the vast staggering expanse of the universe. Though the Psalmist had no Voyager I, no means of looking back at himself as Sagan did, yet he too was awestruck:
'I often think of the heavens your hands have made, and of the moon and stars you put in place. Then I ask, "Why do you care about us humans? Why are you concerned for us weaklings?"' (Psa 8:3-4 CEV)
The KJV says, "When I consider...". There couldn't be a more appropriate word! Joseph Parker of City Temple reminds us that "sider comes a long way up the track of language; it was born sidus... Sidus means star; it is the root of sidereal heavens, the starry heaven, the stellar universe... Con-siderealize -- when we star together -- put the planets into syllables and words and paragraphs; when I considerealize, make a lesson book of the stars; when I punctuate my discourse with milleniums, then I pray". (CTP vol.1 p.228) Whether as an astronomer Sagan was ever led to pray, I don't know, but the starry skies affected David. Who wouldn't be?
Job certainly was, he hears God asking him:
'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Or who hath stretched the line upon it? "Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?' (Job 38:4-7 KJV)
In Contact, Sagan writes:
"There were so many pieces of the sky to look at, so many hundreds of billions of stars to search out. You couldn't spend all your time on only a few of them. She was troubled that in their haste to do a full sky survey in less than a human lifetime, to listen to all of the sky at a billion frequencies, they had abandoned both the frantic talkers and the laconic plodders."
Perhaps I am one of those "laconic plodders". I am privileged to live under African skies. Far from the city lights that isolate and alienate us from the immense "Out There", the days and nights are beautiful beyond words. One can only but gaze in silent reverence. At night, I can't suppress the temptation to go and take a quick quiet look at the stars no matter what predatory danger might lurk out there in the African veldt. And what do I look at?
Sometimes, if I am looking up at the moon, I always look for the first lunar landing spot, where Armstrong touched "soil" as it were, where incarnate earthdust first mingled with moondust. Perchance I might even spy footprints, humanity's imprint upon the moon. I imagine it is me and I look back at earth and at myself and wonder, "Who am I really?"
I also always look at another very particular star though in fact I cannot see it with the naked eye but I know where to look. It is Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri is the brighter of the two Pointers of the Southern Cross. Proxima Centauri is a smaller companion of Alpha Centauri orbiting it. Next to the Sun, Proxima is our nearest star, hence its name. It is special for me in a very parochial sense...it was first discovered by a Scottish-South African astronomer, Robert Innes. I imagine there's a planet there much like ours and on that planet, conscious intelligent life is looking back at us asking, "Who are they? What on earth are they doing?"What can I say? Nothing! Like Job I am lost for words:
"Behold I am vile (lit, "insignificant") What shall I answer Thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth." (Job 40:4)
What happens when we gaze upward and outward? Peter Senge et al explains:
'If you gaze up at the nighttime sky, you see all of the sky visible from where you stand. Yet the pupil of your eye, fully open, is less than a centimeter across. Somehow, light from the whole of the sky must be present in the small space of your eye. And if your pupil were only half as large, or only one quarter as large, this would still be so. Light from the entirety of the nighttime sky is present in every space - no matter how small. This is exactly the same phenomenon evident in a hologram. The three-dimensional image created by interacting laser beams can be cut in half indefinitely, and each piece, no matter how small, will still contain the entire image. This reveals what is perhaps the most mysterious aspect of parts and wholes; as physicist Henri Bortoft says, "Everything is in everything."' (Presence, by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, Betty Sue Flowers)
Sagan quotes William Blake (in Contact):
Little fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
(William Blake, Songs of Experience, "The Fly," Stanzas 1-3)
When I gaze upward, then suddenly, "I-a-fly" senses.... Someone has "brushed my wing"!
oOo
Apollo Lunar Landing Sites http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ApolloLandings.jpg
More about Proxima Centauri http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxima_Centauri
And more about Robert Innes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Innes
©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za/
