When I look at your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
human children that you care for them?
Psalm 8.3-4.
Psalm 8 is one of my favourite stopping places when I feel small and need to regain a sense of proportion. Incredulity is an important and deeply Christian spiritual attitude, an essential prerequisite for that intellectual humility in which wonder and curiosity flourish. I suppose there is something called an ecology of the spirit, a disposition of the heart, a mind habitually receptive, a way of seeing that is patiently and faithfully interested, and not surprised at being astonished. In fact that might be the phrase I prefer as descriptor for a Christian worldview, one who is unsuprised at being astonished.
Reading the poetry and diary of Rebecca Elson, whose faith commitment was more an intellectual faithfulness to truth than an identifiable religious devotion, I have come to recognise a quality of mind that is deeply congenial to a Christian Advent theology. Those who confess "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, full of grace and truth", make the kind of statement that means that for the rest of their lives they will be unsurprised at being astonished. The amazed stargazer of Psalm 8 makes the same connections between a majestic universe and human fragility. So when I first read this from Elson's diary, it set me thinking once again about stars, the importance of perplexity and frustrated intellect as the context for thinking about what it means to speak of our fragility and the mindfulness of God in the one breath, and to speak of incarnation, the Word made flesh:
"Wind moving the branches of the trees. Strange how warm for November. Hit possible to take this for granted? What does it mean? Monday morning. Wake up, dress, eat breakfast, set off on my ratlling old bicycle, through the Grafton Centre, across the common to the black iron footbridge where the swans are waiting to be fed, past Castle Hill, through St Edmund's Gardens and up to the old stone walls of the observatory building. Put up a picture on the screen of part of a small swarm of stars seen by a telescope that hundreds of people, using the accumulated knowledge of thousands of thinkers, put into orbit around our planet. Think about what it means. What does it mean? And is it just, in the end, a discipline like anything, like building brick walls, or balancing accounts, or sitting at an altar in a pose of meditation? This is what I practise, practise it with compassion, with honesty, with dignity, with dedication to some ideals." (Rebecca Elson, A Responsibility to Awe, page 102)
"Think about what it means." That isn't only an intellectual imperative, it is a spiritual summons, an insistent call from deep within the miracle of our own mortal humanity, an invitation to astonishment, to see what infinity might look like, if only we could see. This woman who wrote of swans and stars, of bicyles and telescopes, of balancing accounts and scrutinising the night skies, is like a secular Psalmist. She wants to know, "What does it mean?" It is a good Advent question. And part of its answer is in that other question, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them?" Unsurprisingly, I'm astonished at the answer.
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