Well Hey There May...
...a brief check-in
Hi! May is almost done, can you believe it? Yeah, me neither.
For a variety of reasons, I won’t be posting the normal 6-part issue for May. To be real real, I’m overstretched in ways that need my focus more than normal. This means I’ve had much less space for writing, and forcing the issue this month feels like a set up for overwhelm.
That being said, I do have some goodness below!
Some Audio Candy for You
My husband is a voice actor and has been practicing by reading some of my work! Below, he is reading A Storied Horizon - I hope you enjoy!
Who Is How I Am
I have dear friends who do kind things like send me snail mail. One friend sent me a package with a note it in. In her beautiful calligraphic handwriting, on the envelope was written Nya; Lover of stars.
Names are important. I’ve always been curious and loving about my given name and the story surrounding it. As I get older, I also hold dear what people who really know me call me. How they name me is special because of how they know me. I don’t have a favorite, but right now this one greets me every time I show up at my desk. Nya; Lover of stars. Yes, this is me.
Yes, this is me.
I guess anybody could have said, “Hey Nya, you love stars!” They would be right, obviously. But when someone who knows you proclaims who you are with a succinctness and Love and an honest joy, it’s different. There is a texture to the truth that warms, even protects.
Nya; Lover of stars.
May you have people who Love you and know your names. May you have people who call you how you’ve been known. And may you feel a deep, affirming, textured connection to every name you are given in truth and in Love.
Faith x Science
I’ve recently finished Paul Wallace’s Love & Quasars, which I started right after I finished his Stars Beneath Us. Wallace’s writing plays at the intersection of faith (he’s a Christian preacher) and science (he’s vocationally an astrophysicist) and it is beautifully expansive. Though the faith part is heavy on the Christian side (because that’s his point of reference and I assume that’s his main audience), I really believe his ideas are for *anyone*, even if their “faith” hangs out in the agnostic arena on a good day.
I’m including some of my favorite quotes from both books, and I hope they spark wonder and awe for you like they did for me.
Stars Beneath Us
The Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind. Immediately it’s clear that God is not interested in the particulars of Job’s grievances. Nowhere does God engage the repeated complaints, theological questions, and cries for justice that fill the preceding thirty-six chapters. This, the longest divine speech in the Bible, goes on for 125 verses and respects virtually no conventional religious or theological categories. There’s no mention of worship or sin or guilt or sacrifice. Neither the law nor the prophets appear, nor does human wisdom or righteousness. God makes no comments about repentance, forgiveness, atonement, or love. Most conspicuous is God’s silence regarding the ideal sought by Job: justice. So what does God go on about for so long? The foundations of the earth. Wind and stars and rain. Also ostriches. Feral donkeys make a strong showing. Monsters of land and sea are praised. God, that is, takes Job on a (most unexpected) tour of the cosmos.
p 127 (ebook)
This is the cosmos that I know and love—it appears to be more like a tree growing from the dirt than a rabbit pulled from a hat. The tree is an image of order being drawn out of chaos, and I see that every day, all around me and in me; everything good emerges from something else, organized or not. The magic trick representing ex nihilo is something I have no experience with, around me or within me. Everything good comes out of something else, organized or not. Maybe the Greeks were right: from nothing comes nothing. God works with what is at hand, and what is at hand is often chaos. We don’t know exactly how the ancients imagined chaos, but we might reimagine it as unformed and randomized matter and energy. A good example is the early cosmos: it was uniform (that is, there were no clumps), it was the same temperature everywhere, and its particles moved in random directions.[7] If it had been sound, it would have been white noise. Out of this noise emerged the stars and planets, T. rex, Akron, Ohio, Albert Einstein, and the Chia Pet. Order from chaos, indeed. And God works cooperatively.
p 252 (ebook)
His descent took him first from the pinnacle of human society to its cellar: “But now they make sport of me, those who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to set with the dogs of my flock,” he laments in 30:1. From the bottom everything looked different, and it was from this location that, over the course of thirty-six chapters, he argued with his friends over the meaning of wisdom, the elusiveness of justice, and the character of God. He thought he could go no lower: “My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me” (17:1).But the whirlwind showed up and drove poor Job even further from the good things of life, further from decent society, further from justice, further from security. The direction was outward, away from human civilization and into the howling waste, the desolation of sand and rock, the empty and unmapped lands, and into the presence of chaos itself. What he found out there, surprisingly, was life. True, it was not life as he normally thought about it. It was alien and strange, even freakish. It was wild and free. It mocked human civilization and refused human control. Some of it was modest, nearly invisible. Some of it was unthinking and violent. Some was primordial and fearless. It was not “pretty.” But it was life, thriving in places and conditions we could never hope to survive, far beyond the comforts of human cities. And God, you will remember, was delighted by all of it.
p 309 (ebook) emphasis mine
Love And Quasars
But scientifically speaking, our fit with Earth is no more surprising than a puddle’s fit with a sidewalk. We belong on Earth because we were drawn out of it and have evolved along with it. Evolution’s great stream carries us and the rest of the planet along together.
p 156 (ebook)
Children are endlessly fascinated by sparrows, click pens, rain, hands, ants, the moon, cracks in the sidewalk, dirt, coins, the shapes of leaves, wind, and every other feature of reality, no matter how inconsequential. The sources of childhood wonder go on for pages, books, libraries. Having been so recently and startlingly dropped into being, they live in a state of perpetual wonder. This experience fades as we grow up. This is as it should be, to an extent, because we can’t spend our afternoons collecting beetles in the backyard when we have bills to pay. But we should periodically be reminded of the gratuitous and astonishing gift of existence. Art and stories and poetry and music and science and walks in the woods and acts of love large and small have the power to draw us back into wonder, the fountainhead of both faith and science. When we lose our capacity for wonder, we dishonor existence and forfeit the ability to place death and suffering in their proper context. The thought of that great red tsunami will overwhelm us only if we fail to back up, take a larger view, and see all life as a gift. I do not mean to downplay death or minimize suffering but to suggest wonder, which I think of as a pointed awareness of and gratitude for the gift of existence, as an antidote to their poison.
p 174 (ebook)
As I’ve mentioned, our group worked on quasars, among the most distant objects ever studied. The light we detected from that one quasar traveled for seven billion years before being intercepted by NASA’s orbiting telescope. It had already been traveling for over two billion years when the solar system began to form. It sailed on across the universe as life appeared and evolved, as untold waves of life and death washed across the face of the world, and as certain African hominids stood up, threw their heads back in wonder, became human, and discovered love and quasars.
p 247 (ebook)
What I’m Reading…
I’m THAT person who is reading/listening to 17 books at one time. Here’s a short list of what’s in progress…
How To Die In Space by Paul M. Sutter, PHD
Burnout by Emily Nagoski, PHD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA
The Armies of Those I Love by Ken Liu
The Duke and I: Bridgerton by Julia Quinn
The Cubans: Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times by Anthony DePalma
Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
What are you reading/listening to these days? Would you be interested in having a book of reflections that encourage daily moments of wonder written by me?
A book of reflections to encourage daily wonder? Yes, please…when you are ready. Thank you for the quotes from the two books. I’m adding them to my list! Thank you! 💜