Postcards from the Universe

Some fragmented thoughts on the remarkable images captured by the Webb Telescope and on the complexity of writing about faith (or faiths)

Thursday, July 14
Grand Rapids, Mich.

Hello, kind reader.

Maybe some of us aren’t as jaded as we thought. 

The other day, when NASA released the first images captured by the Webb Telescope, wonder and awe poured out across social media. Reading the reactions was sweet relief from the normal mix of sniping and snark that one often encounters online. It was heartening to be reminded that we’re still capable of being humbled and wowed.

Two stars, one dying and one young, amidst a cloud of dust and gas in the Southern Ring nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScl

The telescope has a remarkable backstory. It is a collaborative effort and a technological marvel. Over the past quarter-century, thousands of people from fourteen countries have contributed to its creation and deployment. (If you’d like read more about that history, I recommend two stories from 2021, a Quanta Magazine piece by Natalie Bachover and one by Rivka Galchen at The New Yorker.)  

The Webb Telescope under construction. Credit: NASA/Desiree Stover

Though I’ve never been one of those people who has any desire to go into space—I can just think of all the things that could and would go wrong—I have always loved looking at the stars. To escape the glare of city lights enough to see the flickers from millions of miles away: It’s an awesome thing. Some years ago, Tristan and I got to go to the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. There, the light pollution is low. A team of trained astronomers guided our eyes, pointing out constellations and planets and helping us see order and pattern where otherwise there was just glimmer and chaos.

At the observatory, the astronomers had set up some powerful telescopes to give us a different perspective on the night sky. But even the strongest of those has nothing on the Webb Telescope, which has already traveled 1 million miles since it left French Guiana on Christmas Day last year.

As I looked through some of the photos dispatched by the telescope, it kindled a childhood memory of some of the stickers that my sister used to love. Lisa Frank was on to something! The universe is kind of over the top!

The photograph that most captivated me was one of the Carina Nebula and its haunting, writhing cloudscape. Here on Earth, 7,600 light years away, we might gasp at the refracted beauty of this starry scene. If we were in its midst, though, and assuming that we had the proper, as-yet-nonexistent gear that would allow us to survive, we’d be overcome by the hot gases and the stellar winds and the blinding light—one of the Carina nebula’s stars is the brightest in the entire Milky Way, an incomprehensible 1.25 million times more luminous than the sun.

The cloudscape of the Carina nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Isn’t it remarkable how the safety of distance enables us to perceive a storm differently? Isn’t it humbling to realize how the passage of time empowers us to regard tumult with a different perspective?

It’s awe-inspiring, too, to think of the ingenuity and knowledge that has gone into creating the technologies that now allow us to glimpse the glories of the heavens more closely than ever before. Millennia ago, our ancestors also studied the skies in their own ways. That inspired the psalmist to write these words: “When I look up at your skies, at what your fingers made—the moon and the stars that you set firmly in place—what are humans that you think about them; what are humans that you pay attention to them?”

I hope the awe we feel at the sight of time gone by and stars so far away will not dim the wonder we feel as we look around this planet and perceive what’s present and near. In that spirit, here’s a blessing for you—for us:

May the magnitude of the universe summon in us an appropriate smallness.
May the majesty of the distant galaxies stir in us true humility.
May the light of faraway constellations remind us of the holy fire within.

May you remember that the same wild creativity that kindled the stars also etched beauty into your body.

May our awe yield hope.
May our gratitude inspire grace.
May our wonder stir love.

Amen.

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A follow-up note to last week’s letter: After I wrote about the Ukrainian artist Ivanka Demchuk and asked why it is that some people’s faith might erode amidst hardship while others’ endures, a friend DMed me to raise a valid point: Was I placing a value judgment on faith that perseveres, elevating it above that which might falter? 

It’s an excellent question. 

Often, many of us use “faith” as shorthand. But faith comes in so many different forms. Sometimes we mean religious faith—and sometimes, for those of us who are religious in some way, we mean faith that is much like ours. But there are all kinds of faith, including faith that isn’t just or even mainly religious. There is faith in humanity, faith in institutions, faith in meaningful narratives and origin stories, faith in the eventual fulfillment of our desires and even our fantasies. 

Faith isn’t an unadulterated good. It can be misplaced or misunderstood, misused and even abused—and we’ve certainly seen the damage that some expressions of faith, Christian and non-, can do. 

I’m grateful for the reminder from my friend to be careful and precise in my wording. A word like “faith” can stir different feelings in different people. Though I write from the Christian tradition, I acknowledge that not all of you come from that tradition or subscribe to some version of it—and even those of you who do might have radically divergent understandings of it. Where we sometimes speak of Christianity, perhaps it might be more helpful nowadays to speak of Christianities, and/or to clarify what strain of Christian thought we’re talking about, so as to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding. 

Suffice to say, going forward, I’ll do my best to choose my words wisely, even as I trust in you to read empathetically.

What’s stirring in you this week? How did you feel when you were looking at the pictures sent back by the Webb telescope? When have you felt wonder and awe recently? I’d love to know.

That’s all I’ve got for you today. I’m so glad we can stumble through all this together, and I’ll try to write again soon.

With gratitude for your companionship,
Jeff