Clergy Letter

I grew up in suburbia and saw very little of the night sky, orange sodium street lights masked most of the view. I learnt to find the North Star and name the usual constellations, the Plough and Cassiopeia. It wasn’t until I went to Wales on holiday that I was able to appreciate the beauty of a crowded night sky with no light pollution. As I was able to see the sky for what it was, a small part of the arm of a galaxy in an infinite universe, I was lost in the wonder of its magnificence. From the age of eleven (we got a television then!)I have watched programmes that have explored the planets and the night skies and never lost my wonder for them. When we read the Bible, we follow the growth of knowledge of the same universe from time immemorial; the pictures of the heavens, our place in that picture and the conviction that it was all part of God’s creation. The fishermen in the time of Jesus would have steered by those same stars just as later generations did, until the electronic age of satellite navigation. The Church in the 16th and 17th centuries could not bear to believe that God had not placed us at the centre of the solar system and banned the ‘heretical’ works of Copernicus and Galileo for their calculation that the planets went around the Sun. Theology and science seem destined to be at loggerheads. I have thought long and hard about the theories of the origin of the universe and can see the sense in the big bang theory. As someone with a ‘simplistic science’ sort of inclination it seems the right explanation for my small mind to grasp. As a believer in God’s creation, I also see the universe as divine gift. There is surely nothing wrong with seeing God as the creator of the celestial spark that started that big bang. I am not alone in such thoughts, the astronomer George Smoot said, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at the face of God.” Why? Because something must have caused the big bang, and who else but God could have done such a thing? I think I will use that thought the next time I go out to see the night sky – ‘looking into the face of God’. Its beauty and science are there for us all to look at with awe and wonder. Not only is it part of the created background for us, it is providing our scientists with more and more knowledge of our place in this ever-expanding Creation. We are an infinitesimally small part of the science of the universe, but yet, we are held in the palm of God’s hand and God can name each and every one of us. The knowledge that we are an integral part of something so wonderful, so God-given, is surely worth a moment of your time to look into the face of God on the next clear night. REV TRISH