Galileo, Astronomer & Person of Prayer

 

A historian has discovered that a 16th century printing of The Almagest—a highly influential ancient astronomy text—contains extensive annotations from Galileo Galilei, the astronomer who later overthrew that text’s conception of a geocentric cosmos.Reproduced with permission of the National Central Library of Florence

The Lord is gracious and merciful,
    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
 The Lord is good to all,
    and his compassion is over all that he has made.

 All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord,
    and all your faithful shall bless you.
 They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom
    and tell of your power,
 to make known to all people your[b] mighty deeds
    and the glorious splendor of your[c] kingdom.
 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
    and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

                                                                    psalm 145: 8-13 NRsvue 

Earlier this year I wrote about the unexpected discovery of a copy of an important medieval text with what had been a partially blank page on which Psalm 145 had been written in and annotated. Ivan Malara, the scholar who found this insertion recognized the hand-writing of Galileo, a supposition that has now been supported by a number of other experts in the field. Here are a couple of paragraphs from my March blog entry: 

Here is the description from an article in the Smithsonian Magazine: 

Historian Ivan Malara spotted the inscriptions in January while leafing through a 1551 copy of the Almagest at Italy’s National Central Library of Florence. Malara realized that a loose page in the text—a second-century C.E. astronomical manual by the Greco-Roman polymath Ptolemy, which asserts that Earth is at the center of the universe—contained a transcription of Psalm 145. The handwriting was reminiscent of Galileo’s, an astronomer often lionized as the “father of modern science.” Additional annotations in the book’s margins similarly matched Galileo’s hand.

There are lots of reasons to remember Galileo, not the least of which is the conflict between the astronomer and the Roman Catholic church regarding his proposition that our solar system is heliocentric rather than geocentric .Galileo was tried for his supposedly heretical premise that the Earth and other planets were in orbit around the Sun rather than the Earth being at the centre. He did avoid torture or execution but as the result of two trials for heresy he was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life and ordered not to promulgate his dangerous views. 

The update to this story was about the authentication but there was something else that caught my attention. Here is a paragraph from a recent Smithsonian piece: 

At first, the psalm—both a prayer and a poem exalting God’s greatness—had bemused Malara. This was the only early printing of The Almagest he had seen with a biblical reference, and it seemed contrary to both the modern stereotype of Galileo flouting religious authority and Malara’s own experience studying Galileo’s writings. But in another 16th century printing of The Almagest in Florence, he found a note by an unknown author claiming that “Galileo, before studying Ptolemy, offered a prayer to God.” That jibes with a 1673 letter written by the mathematician Alessandro Marchetti, who also said Galileo prayed each time he sat down with The Almagest.

The story many of us have heard through the years is that Galileo poked the Church in the eye and the mighty church poked back. We have come to realize that Jesuit scholars were coming to similar conclusions about our heliocentric solar system around the same time as Galileo. Now we're told that Galileo was a person of prayer and brought those sensibilities to his important work.

We live and we learn, thanks be to God, Creator of the Universe. 

                                                                 Galileo on Trial

Climate Change & Christian Camping

 

Campers at Wellman Lake United Church Camp canoeing in July 2025. The camp's summer 2026 season has been cancelled after floods in Manitoba. (Photo by Wellman Lake United Church Camp)

Two of our grandchildren will be attending nearby United Church camp Quin-mo-lac again this summer. They really enjoyed it last year and both of them were able to paddle out to an island where there is a bald eagles' nest.

Their involvement in this particular came pleases me. My parents farmed me out to friends when I was ten months old so they could provide leadership at Quin-mo-lac and I have a postcard to prove it -- was I a precocious reader? I was a camper there as a child and taught swimming as a teen. 

Our three children all attended church camps and son Isaac taught canoeing at one north of Sudbury, also as a teen. These outdoor opportunities to experience Creation are so important and romance is a possibility. I met Ruth at a non-denominational camp 50+ years ago and that turned out rather well. 

Christian camping in mainline churches has suffered in recent years as our membership ages and declines so I was surprised to learn through Broadview Magazine that the United Church is hanging in there: 

The United Church runs the largest faith-based camping organization in Canada, founded in the 1930s. In its heyday, it boasted 75 camps and more than 20,000 annual campers. Though the numbers have dropped in recent years, there are still 54 camps hosting about 15,000 youth each year. They are led by thousands of paid and volunteer counsellors.

While this is relatively encouraging news the same article reported that one of those United Church camps, Wellman Lake, has been forced to cancel its  entire season due to extreme flooding in the region. I wrote about flying into Winnipeg in June on the day that a massive storm swept across the province creating havoc and putting a crimp in our vacation plans because of flooding. Three weeks later another devastating storm occurred, ruining crops, flooding homes, and closing this camp. 

We probably don't consider the effects of the climate emergency as a threat to the future of organized camping but it is real. Camp Mystic, a Christian camp in Texas experienced an unprecedented flood last summer and more than two dozen kids and staff perished in the night. Often camps are near bodies of water and in Ontario a number of camps are in areas subject to more violent storms. 

I hope Wellman Lake camp will recover and continue to offer faith-based opportunities to children and youth. 

                     Chapel Service at Quin-mo-lac in days of yore -- check out the clergy clerical collars!

 

A Congregation to Save Bell Creek

A “Save Our Bell Creek” meeting on Wed., July 22, 2026 co-hosted by Belleville-based Quinte Field Naturalists and The Friends of Bell Creek drew more than 100 residents with concerns about a 103-unit residential subdivision proposed for lands within the Bell Creek watershed. Photo by DEREK BALDWIN /Belleville Intelligencer

 The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,

  the world, and those who live in it,
2 for he has founded it on the seas

    and established it on the rivers.

Psalm 24:1-2 NRSVue 

Last evening I cycled to a public meeting at a nearby church,  Eastminster United. I arrived a bit early but when I entered the large room it was already nearly full and people kept coming until there were in the neighbourhood of 125 to 135 souls. 

This wasn't a religious meeting but it was a congregation of those who have what they might describe as a spiritual connection to a 6+ hectare wild area in the east end of the city of Belleville. It is a combination of woods and marshland with a large portion slated for housing development. Many of those assembled visit this lovely enclave daily while we are occasional visitors, enjoying the trilliums and marsh marigolds in Spring and the trails can be magical after a snowstorm. The gathering was labelled Save Our Bell Creek. 

This was not a Belleville Council meeting although I commend the four councilors who attended. The lawyers who represent the developers were not present to say that they have complied with reduced government regulations, hardly something to brag about. The current Ontario government has been brutal in reducing the scope of Conservation Authorities including setbacks from sensitive marshland. It has pressured municipalities to develop within their boundaries using grants as both the carrot and the stick to make it happen. 

Once again the presenters did an excellent job of making the case for preserving this land in perpetuity. There are maple trees that are more than a hundred years old and a cedar woods that is unique. Quinte Field Naturalists have documented more than 800 species of flora and fauna including several owl species. This choice for protection would be a far better legacy for the city than another subdivision. 

I went to this meeting because I am religious and spiritual and have a passion for protecting wild spaces, including within or near urban areas. I understand the need for housing in this province but there is plenty of land in Belleville officially designated for housing development and this is not necessary. A guest speaker noted that municipalities such and Kitchener and Guelph and Brampton have developed robust guidelines for protecting wetlands. 

The Belleville Intelligencer was there last night and the article about the meeting is already online. Here are a few paragraphs from the piece: 

Environmental Defence spokesperson Rebecca Kolarich told the meeting wetlands are being lost across the province as the Ontario government continues to erode environmental protections in the name of creating more needed housing.

Thanks to amended Ontario regulations, for example, Kolarich said former construction buffer zones of 120 metres from wetlands have been reduced by the province to 30 metres from sensitive ecosystems such as Bell Creek.

“This is a problem because these buffer zones protect wetlands from impacts of development including pollution, runoff and erosion. They also protect surrounding properties from flooding by making sure development isn’t happening within a wetland’s floodplain. The new 30 metre buffer is not nearly enough space to prevent erosion, pollution and other harms,” Kolarich said.

“Southern Ontario has lost over 72 per cent of its original wetlands since the start of colonization and unfortunately these losses continue. So, over the past eight years, the Ontario government has removed or weakened key policies and programs that were once in place to protect these remaining wetlands and the weakening of these provincial policies, programs and regulations has left Ontario’s wetlands unprotected and communities like Belleville, at risk.”

https://www.intelligencer.ca/news/belleville-residents-speak-out-against-subdivision-proposed-for-bell-creek

While I could have offered an impromptu prayer or a verse or two of scripture in this place of worship I doubt they would have been well received. Just the same I will pray for a positive outcome for the Bell Creek watershed gem. 

                                                          Bell Creek on the Belleville doorstep

John of John & Whistler

 

I've read a fair amount of fiction this year, actual page-turning books, challenging my screen brain. I'd say that my two favourite novels so far in 2026 are John of John by Booker winner John Stewart and Whistler by celebrated Anne Patchett. John of John is raw and unflinching like the Scottish Hebrides, while Whistler is elegant and yet probing, reflecting the largely New York City setting. I kept blatting phrases to Ruth (she's read them both) because the writing and storytelling compelled me to do so.

I didn't know that both had key male characters who had married women but were gay. They made this choice in a time when that was what transpired for many LGBTQ persons who wanted to fit into a largely homophobic society.  In both instances these men became fathers as well. One of these characters did so because he was religious.

As I finished Whistler it occurred to me that these sort of scenarios played out quite a number of times during my ministry. Actually, before I was ordained Ruth and I became good friends with a couple where the husband was also a student in our seminary. We were shocked when they parted company because of his orientation and he was one of the first to be open with the "powers that were" who to their credit approved him for ordination. We remained friends until his death. 

I worked with a music director in one congregation who had been married with four children. Eventually he separated from his spouse but it was only after his kids were grown and his mother died that he become open about being gay. He ended up with a wonderful male partner. 

I began ministry in another congregation as a significant scandal unfolded where a key member left her husband for another prominent figure. Her husband was gay but he was concerned about his status in the community and wanted to maintain the marriage for appearances sake. It was a mess. 

In my final congregation a wise and supportive retired minister who had been married to a woman. His daughter came to worship when she was visiting and she accepted that her dad eventually married his same-sex partner. In that same congregation the man who became chair of the board just before I left talked about his decades-long determination to make his conventional marriage work because of his conservative Christian faith. His wife eventually encouraged him to be true to himself as a gay man and he chose the United Church. 

None of these situations would have been imaginable in my youth, yet all were very real and the characters in these two novels ring true. Read them both!

Imagine Following Jesus

 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

 “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid.  People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Matthew 5: 13-16 NRSVue, following the Beatitudes

 I think this is enough for today,

Rev. Benjamin Cremer

@Brcremer

·

4m

Heartbreakingly, those who believe only those who believe and look like them here on Earth deserve the best also believe that way about heaven.

Frederick Douglass in England

You may know the name of Frederick Douglass, a Black man born into slavery in the 19th century who became one of the great figures in the abolitionist movement, someone who was consulted by Abraham Lincoln, an eloquent orator who mesmerized audiences on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. This month which marked the 250th anniversary of American independence  is also the 180th anniversary of a series of lectures given by Douglass across England , including Manchester, a city central to the cotton trade that depended on enslaved people in the United States.

When Douglass arrived in Manchester at age 27 he was still legally a slave in the United States and a fugitive. A group of Quakers gathered funds to finance an abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, with Douglass as editor and to purchase his freedom for 150 pounds, a considerable amount of money. Some abolitionists protested his purchase because they felt that it legitimized a morally reprehensible trade in human beings but Douglass knew that without his legal freedom he risked arrest and re-enslavement when he returned to the United States.

 Douglass gave a speech a number of times with the title "What to the American Slave is your Fourth of July?"  Sadly, it seems as pertinent today as it did nearly 200 years ago because of the rise in racism and inequality in the US, including through the Christian Nationalist movement.  Here is a paragraph: 

 What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

I highly recommend the David Blight biography of Douglass if you are interested in learning about his remarkable life. 

                                               Inaugural Lecture in what will be an annual series 

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

   O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

   You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
          you discern my thoughts from far away.
  You search out my path and my lying down,
        and are acquainted with all my ways.
   Even before a word is on my tongue,
          O LORD, you know it completely.
   You hem me in, behind and before,
          and lay your hand upon me.
   Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
          it is so high that I cannot attain it.

   Where can I go from your spirit?
          Or where can I flee from your presence?
   If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
          if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
   If I take the wings of the morning
          and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
  even there your hand shall lead me,
          and your right hand shall hold me fast.
  If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
          and the light around me become night,”
  even the darkness is not dark to you;
          the night is as bright as the day,
          for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

  Search me, O God, and know my heart;
          test me and know my thoughts.
  See if there is any wicked way in me,
          and lead me in the way everlasting.

                     Psalm 139:1-14, 23-24

I can be hit and miss with my daily scripture readings, using the common lectionary as my guide. Just the same, I often come upon passages that are not only quite familiar, they are akin to old friends and sources of comfort going back decades. Sometimes they evoke powerful memories. 

The past few days the Psalm selection, including today's, has been a portion of Psalm 139 which I used in many funerals, including one at the beginning of this year. I have largely left the "hatch, match, and dispatch" world of ministry but a sad circumstance with neighbours led me back into this role. A few days before Christmas the mother of the household found her unconscious son in his basement bedroom due to a drug overdoes. While the paramedics responded quickly the doctors soon ascertained that his brain function was gone. 

I offered to go to the hospital to support the family as they said farewell and organs were harvested. Then I led the service in a packed chapel, many of the people there young and likely searching for meaning. This passage seemed so appropriate. His mother summoned the courage to speak and did so with honesty and tenderness.

All of this came to mind vividly as I made my way through the verses.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.