smelling stars

I found them walking from Winchester High School one afternoon to meet Ginger at her church. A small handbill on the door of the Griffin Museum of Photography announced the showing of color pictures of the universe by David Malin. What I learned that afternoon, and in my subsequent trips with my English classes, was that Malin, who began as a micro-photographer (check out this book), had developed a way of photographing different levels of light, if you will, using different colored plates (I’m out of my league trying to describe this, you understand), such that he was able to give color and scape to what we can only see as small white lights or even darkness, if we can see them at all. This photograph, for instance, is the Horsehead Nebula in the constellation Orion, the Hunter; I do well to find the stars that make up his belt on any given winter evening.

I thought about Malin on my way home from church because of a conversation I had during coffee hour. Brian, who would be able to understand what Malin was doing, told me – with great joy – about a recent discovery. It seems scientists have been able to isolate the largest molecule in the galaxy (so far) outside of our solar system. The cool thing is it is the same molecule that gives raspberries their flavor.

“So you see,” Brian said with a smile, “our galaxy has a raspberry filling. I love it. God has a sense of humor.”

They also found alcohol molecules. The Milky Way appears to be a giant raspberry daquiri. Now that will preach.

Though A Wrinkle in Time is the book that gets the most attention, my favorite volume in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet is A Wind in the Door. Before Malin started taking photographs, or scientists when berry picking, L’Engle was spinning a story of size and significance. Two siblings, Charles Wallace and Meg, face the same expanse of magnitude and minutiae as Charles Wallace has an infection in the smallest particles of his blood and Meg is fighting cosmic evil that is ripping stars out of the sky. (Did I mention it’s a science fiction story?) At one point in the book, Meg is taken to a planet where the mitochondria, the stars, and Meg are all the same size and she is told to remember everything matters and everything is connected.

In one of her nonfiction books, A Rock That is Higher Than I: Story as Truth, L’Engle wrote:

The secrets of the atom are not unlike Pandora's box, and what we must look for is not the destructive power but the vision of interrelatedness that is desperately needed on this fragmented planet. We are indeed part of a universe. We belong to each other; the fall of every sparrow is noted, every tear we shed is collected in the Creator's bottle.

That we are inextricably connected to one another is not a new idea. In fact, I think it borders on cliché, as often as we give lip service to it. (I’m not sure we are quite as accustomed to incarnating the connections.) Here is what has caught me with its freshness today: the imagination of God is so extravagant that God makes connections we can’t even begin to see, or smell. In the middle of the galaxy, in a place we cannot even recognize with our own eyes, are beams of light and gatherings of gas older than anything we can comprehend, and they smell like raspberries. The layers of the universe, from the indistinguishable micro particles we have yet to discover to the starscape whose oldest light has yet to even find us, are full of the love and limitlessness of our Creator.

The connections are as old as creation, and as fresh as our willingness to sharpen our senses and stretch our minds and hearts to find them. As Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes –
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

O, taste and see that the Lord is good. Smell, too.

Peace,
Milton

lenten journal: this world is my home

When I walk into work everyday, I do so to the soundtrack of Spanish radio. And part of that soundtrack, which appears to be in heavy rotation, is this percussive-techno-yodeling thing that is infectious in that certain way only a percussive-techno-yodeling thing can be. Long after evening service has started and we’ve turned off the radio, I can hear Abel start laughing when I realize I’m still singing the damn song.

“What is that song?” I asked him today.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Some Mexican thing.”

I’m haunted by a percussive-techno-Mexican yodeling-thing. And I’m haunted by two things I read by Stanley Hauerwas yesterday as he reflected on the L’Arche community.

I believe L’Arche is the place where God has made it possible for Christians to be hope in a world where there is no solution. (55)

and

I have said that Christians are called to nonviolence not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to rid the world of war – though we certainly want to rid the world of war. Rather, as faithful followers of Christ in a world at war, we cannot imagine being anything other than nonviolent. Of course we want to make war less likely. But nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church. (55)

I love to sing harmony. As a result, I love gospel music. On Sundays after church, when I lived in Houston, my brother and I would race home from church so we could watch Gospel Jubillee. Those of you who follow this blog know how easily I can get caught up chasing Gaither Family Gathering video clips on YouTube. And it’s why I love bluegrass music: gospel music that needs a guitar.

So many of those old songs talk about heaven and they talk about how we belong there more than here.

this world is not my home I’m just a passing through
my treasure’s all laid up somewhere beyond the blue
the angels beckon me from heaven’s open door
and I can’t feel at home in this world anymore

I know these old songs grew out of times of hardship. And, as much as I love the harmonies, I have to wonder, in a world where there is no solution, why escape felt like the most hopeful choice. (I’ve worked on that last sentence for a good while now, trying not to sound harsh. I don’t feel harsh, I just don’t know another way to say it.) Whatever eternity looks like, I trust being in the unfiltered presence of God will be worth the trip and – not but – this world is my home and I think God expects more of me than to wish I were somewhere else, even if I sound good wishing it.

Wishing and hoping aren’t the same thing.

A world with no solution is a seedbed for violence. The reason I know that to be true is evidenced every time I have to call a customer service number and fight my way through all the “convenient” computer options until I finally get an actual human being on the phone who can’t actually help me. Violence is an easy choice for me in those situations because the voice on the other end is dismembered from any semblance of humanity and they can’t see me and I feel powerless so striking back, futile as it may be, is my all too familiar move.

Humaninzing the enemy is a lousy military strategy.

For all the resonance I found with Hauerwas’ statements, I shook my head and smiled when I read the last two sentences of the paragraph:

But nonviolence is a sign of hope that there is an alternative to war. And that alternative is called church.

“Stanley,” I thought, “you are one hell of a straight man. Don’t you realize the punch line (violent pun intended) you’re setting up?”

Yesterday at church I got to sing harmony with my friend, Donna May. Our song choice was also one written in difficult times, and one we felt had something to offer to our worship on the first Sunday in Lent and one where we were sharing Communion together.

let us pause in life’s pleasure and count its many tears
as we all sup sorrow with the poor
there’s a song that will linger forever in our ears
oh, hard times come again no more

it’s a song the cry of the weary
hard times hard times come again no more
many days you have lingered around our cabin door
oh, hard times come again no more

On this Sunday, we celebrated Communion by intinction, meaning folks came forward, took a piece of the bread, dipped it in the cup, and then ate both elements together. The practice took hold in American churches during the tuberculosis scare at the beginning of the last century. Churches didn’t want their members to be frightened to take Communion, so they found a way to allay their fears.

I couldn’t help but think , as I watched our little band of Pilgrims (that’s what we call ourselves at Pilgrim United Church of Christ) lined up for our meal together, how much we looked like one of those soup lines from the Depression Era photographs of people waiting for bread. In our sacred soup line stood some racked with grief so fresh they have a hard time sitting in worship, some with chronic pain, some with physical ailments, and a host of others whose injuries and heartache was not quite as apparent. And we stood in line with all the walking wounded of the faith who have come before us, and all those who will follow us, not because the Bread and the Cup offered a solution to the things we carry with us, but because we are not alone.

We are not alone.
We belong here.
We are in this together.

Humanizing one another is how peace is waged.

Peace,
Milton

P. S. -- I couldn’t resist this find: Mavis Staples singing “Hard Times.”