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The Pillars of Creation, NASA
“The Pillars of Creation are truly magnificent. They are about seven thousand light-years away, which means that every photon our telescopes capture from it is seven thousand years old. The Pillars themselves are about six light-years across, meaning it would take light six years to travel across them.” - Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos
"...the cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." - Carl Sagan, Cosmos
"Humans may be a way the universe knows itself, but truly we are only a way. Honestly, I can't know myself without the cosmos or without you, The Stars." - Nya Abernathy, A Letter to the Stars
“When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said They operated like surgeons…The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is—So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.” -Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems, 5.
“In fact, the path to wonder is not sophistication or intellect or articulation, it is a clock wound backward.” – Cole Arthur Rile, This Here Flesh
Ancestral Light
Above, Cole Arthur Riley in This Here Flesh is talking about wonder captured in childhood. She's so right. Yet, when I read this it takes me further back than my single-digit ages.
Wonder being a "clock wound backward" took me to the sky.
One of my bedside space books (yes, I have more than one) is The Mysteries of the Universe by Will Gater. The pictures are utterly astounding and elicit awe all by themselves. But the learning brings even more joy to my nerdy heart.
This is the Spindle Galaxy:
Photo by NASA
It is jaw droppingly beautiful and exquisitely far. What we can see of the galaxy is a masterpiece of ancient light. The light of that galaxy has taken 44 million years to get to our blue dot in the cosmos. You are literally looking into the past when you look up.
Photo by Lenstravelier on Unsplash
The light from our star, the one we call Sun, it is 8 minutes old by the time it reaches us. Even the sunshine on your face is from the past.
If you don't know Mahalia Jackson, listen to her sing one of the most recognizable gospel songs "How I Got Over". The line, "You know my soul look back and wonder how I made it over?" came to me as I pondered celestial wonder and light. She sings of struggle and hardness and difficulty and ultimately of being brought “over”. I believe she's singing from a place that knows the distance crossed going from who she's told she is by an unkind, wonderless world to arrive at the knowing of her own awe and marvel in the eyes of Creator. This same Creator is sometimes called the Father of Lights. If the Creator who “brings us over” is the Father of the 44 million-year-old Spindle Galaxy light, then surely this Creator is also the Ancient of Days, having brought many over their journey. For some of us, it seems we had to travel 44 million heart-years on this Earth before the Light of Our Wonder reached us.
Now friends, I know you know the light of the Spindle Galaxy has its own purpose apart from us. We are not the the sole-center of the universe. And as the Spindle Galaxy is contentedly being its lovely luminous self, what can 44 million year old light mean to us? What's the point of us not only seeing the light but also knowing some parts of the light's story, knowing that it's source no longer exists as we see it? If the ancestral light of a galaxy can exist - without diffusing, with a clarity of its source as brilliant and wonder-full as it was when the light left - for millions of years, can we imagine our own ancestral light?
If your ancestors are those who have come and gone before you that you are tethered to...sometimes willingly and sometimes not...what of their light? What if the light of your ancestors is coming towards you through spacetime, awaiting you to behold their light with wonder and awe? What of the ancestral light you are creating now, that light that will be seen coming from you out to the 7th generation and beyond?
What light will you leave in the Earth that will mix with time and space, inherited by the future ones who will be of your particular place? For us, the Spindle Galaxy beckons us to hope in wonder of Ancestral Light. We can marvel, confess, and tell the story of "how we got over" the distances placed between our eyes and the light of our inherent wonder. In the midst, may we also marvel in the light we bring over and beyond our own selves and our now to those awaiting the beauty of our light.
This concludes the free portion for Of Earth & Of Stars. If you are a paid subscriber, keep scrolling :) There are four more sections paid subscribers receive:
3. Ritual of Connectedness
4. Cloud of (Cosmic) Witnesses
5. What The Light Has Seen - A Visualization (with Audio option)
6. What Has My Attention (A list with links of what media I’m digging)
PLUS: The accompanying podcast episode to this issue on Ancient Guides featuring Marcie Alvis-Walker!
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