PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN -MOON,VENUS, JUPITER OVER COLLEGEVILLE INSTITUTE
After writing about the Kepler Mission, I remembered an article my Trappist friend, Fr. Maurice Flood, sent to me years ago. It was from the July 1994 issue of Sky & Telescope and told the story of Trappist sisters at Santa Rita Abbey in Arizona who shared the love of contemplating the night sky. One in particular, Sr. Sherly Chen, a graduate of Yale, shared her thoughts with author David H. Levy.
Levy was struck by the connections between science and religion as he listened to the sisters, experienced their prayer, and gazed with them at the clear night sky. I remembered that Chen had shared a poem she had written after considering the distance starlight had to travel to be seen by her that night. I found the article and poem in my old office:
Light
which left the Pleiades
2,000 years ago
arrived just when
a Mayan’s eye
peered upwards
through the stone shaft
of the Temple of the Jaguar Sun.
Other rays
began their earthward Journey
before I even existed
to meet my eye
in the expanse of desert sky
after Vigils.
Grace
sets out from God
before I need it
rushes light-years toward me
meets me at the very moment I fall.
When it arrives
I am there.
Speak Your Mind