James Webb & the Voice of the Nova

 

Lord of the star fields

Ancient of days
Universe Maker
Here's a song in your praise

Wings of the storm cloud
Beginning and end
You make my heart leap
Like a banner in the wind

Oh, love that fires the sun
Keep me burning
Lord of the star fields
Sower of life
Heaven and earth are
Full of your light

O Lord, our Sovereign,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory above the heavens.
     Out of the mouths of babes and infants
you have founded a bulwark because of your foes,
    to silence the enemy and the avenger.

 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are humans that you are mindful of them,
    mortals that you care for them?

Psalm 8:1-4 NRSVue

I've written about Bruce Cockburn more than once through the years and I think I've identified Lord of the Starfields as my favourite Cockburn song, although during his recent Belleville concert there were plenty of noteworthy pieces.

With the James Webb Space Telescope so much in the news I continue to have mixed feelings about "going cosmic" when we have so much to address here on planet Earth. Why spend billions to explore our solar system and universe when half of the world's population is now vulnerable to the extremes of climate change? We now know that the billions spent in the 1950s and 1960s to "boldly go where no man has gone before" was more about a competition for supremacy between the United States and Russia than exploration. And now its the billionaires who are engaging in space travel as a vanity project. 

And yet...when I look into the night sky from a remote location I experience a sense of wonder and awe which is profoundly spiritual. I know I am viewing a miniscule portion of a rather ordinary galaxy. I can still revel in the vastness of it all and be humbled by the spectacle of Creation beyond my imagining.

Recently the JWST was launched successfully from the United States, a ten billion dollar project which went well over budget. The hope is that ot will far surpass the Hubble Telescope in the clarity of its images and give us information about the distant past and formation of the universe, as well as the present. 

“Today, we present humanity with a groundbreaking new view of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope – a view the world has never seen before,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “These images, including the deepest infrared view of our universe that has ever been taken, show us how Webb will help to uncover the answers to questions we don’t even yet know to ask; questions that will help us better understand our universe and humanity’s place within it.”

It's not surprising that a number of faith writers have offered perspectives on this achievement with lots of thoughts about the importance of wonder, tempered with concerns about human hubris and maintaining a perspective on the realities of our troubled planet. 

Maybe we can agree that being awestruck is essential to our humanity and that we can praise the Creator, the voice of the nova. 

Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Voice of the nova

Smile of the dew
All of our yearning
Only comes home to you

Oh, love that fires the sun
Keep me burning