11 April: That eclipse that we missed.

The Vatican Observatory have published articles and photos from the recent solar eclipse. This picture is from Fr James Kurzynski, who writes:

Yep, you guessed it. Another eclipse post… and for very good reason. I’m still unpacking my eclipse experience both literally (luggage) and spiritually. Until I wrap my head, heart and prayer around what happened, here are some of my initial images. The quality isn’t the best because I just grabbed them off of social media. Better quality images to come!

Enjoy!

Brother Guy Consolmagno describes a few steps of the dance between Religion and Science:

Observing a total solar eclipse is of great value to scientists studying the Sun’s corona, a study that was pioneered by Fr. Angelo Secchi, SJ of the Roman College in the mid 1800s. But of course all of us, scientists or not, were also enraptured by the beauty of the event. The laws of physics are so reliable that we can predict the time and place of an eclipse to a fraction of a second; but who could predict how beautiful it would be, or how it would affect each person who observed it? That tells me so much about a Creator who is both reliable and yet forever full of surprise!

5 February, Creation 2024 VI: understanding the eye.

To an alehouse: met Mr. Pierce the surgeon, and Dr. Clerke, Waldron, Turberville my physician for the eyes, and Lowre, to dissect several eyes of sheep and oxen, with great pleasure and to my great information. But strange that this Turberville should be so great a man, and yet to this day had seen no eyes dissected, or but once, but desired this Dr. Lowre to give him the opportunity to see him dissect some.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys.

Illustration from wiki commons

Samuel Pepys had an orderly, enquiring mind, which helped him to excel as a senior civil servant in King Charles II’s Royal Navy, as well to compose his diary in code. It was a great sadness to him that in middle age he was losing his sight. He eventually gave up his diary as he did not wish to dictate it, nor to self censor.

Before that he tried to get a cure or some alleviation but that was not forthcoming. Here we find him eager for more, potentially useful knowledge from scientific investigation at an alehouse. Not many locals today would tolerate dissections alongside the dart board!

At the dawn of the scientific age, his optician, Dr Turberville, had not examined an eye in this way, and lacked the equipment that today makes the examination of the living eye so awesome. But as Sir Isaac Newton would put it, we are ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, the giants who opened the way to the better understanding that might have saved Pepys’s sight.

27 January 1666: What use is respiration? Creation 2024, V.

“The first meeting of Gresham College, since the plague. What, among other fine discourse pleased me most, was Sir G. Ent [Sir George Ent, F.R.S., President of the College of Physicians.] about Respiration; that it is not to this day known, or concluded on among physicians, nor to be done either, how the action is managed by nature, or for what use it is.

From The Diary of Samuel Pepys.

It’s hard to imagine a time when doctors did not know what use respiration is. It’s such a fundamental fact of life for humans and cattle but also for all animal and plant life. Sir George Ent would rejoice at the increase in knowledge over the years. Curiosity is a valuable human attribute, and so too is gratitude!

So let’s thank God for enquiring minds and all the gifts they have brought us. May we use them wisely.

29 October: A Sad Thing.

29th. In the street did overtake and almost run upon two women crying and carrying a man’s coffin between them. I suppose the husband, of one of them, which, methinks, is a sad thing.

From The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 29 October, 1665.

By the time Pepys wrote this entry, the plague had been killing thousands of Londoners a week for months. People were fearful of falling ill, as the majority of patients died. The means of infection was poorly understood – hence the comprehensive personal protection equipment sported by the doctor shown above, but the two poor women with the coffin did not even have that.

Pepys was busy with preparations for war, trying to organise provisions for the navy to be able to stay at sea for more than a few days at a time, a massive responsibility. He still has eyes to see with, to see the human cost of the pandemic.

Let’s thank God for bringing us safely through the pandemic of our own time, and pray that we may not ignore those who are bereft and finding it hard to cope.

27 October: and so to bed

“To Bow, to my Lady Pooly’s, where my wife was with Mr. Batelier and his sisters; and there I found a noble supper. About ten o’clock we rose from table, and sang a song; and so home in two coaches, (Mr. Batelier and his sister Mary and my wife and I in one, and Mercer [Mrs Pepys’ maidservant] alone in the other); and after being examined at Allgate whether we were husbands and wives, home.

So to bed mighty sleepy, but with much pleasure. Reeves lying at my house; and mighty proud I am (and ought to be thankful to God Almighty) that I am able to have a spare bed for my friends.

From The Diary of Samuel Pepys

The idea of morality police operating in Stuart London is surprising, given that life at court was notoriously scandalous, but here we have Pepys and friends getting together, casting aside fears of the pandemic of the day, the plague, still present in London after many months. Mercer was a live-in servant and a good singer.

Let us be thankful to God Almighty for the gift of a home, and for the chances we may have to welcome friends to a meal if not a sleepover!

Let’s be thankful that, thanks to vaccinations and precautions that sometimes seemed excessive, covid-19 is now a disease we can live with.

And let us be thankful for the care of nurses, doctors and other health workers, and for the scientists who, since Pepys’ day have so increased our medical knowledge and skills.

Let us pray for all who have died during the pandemic, their bereaved families and friends.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

24 October: Kings Charles II and III and scientific enquiry

Do you find it vaguely irritating, or perhaps slightly ridiculous, the obsessive recording of steps taken, time elapsed, pulse rate and breath monitoring that goes with jogging and other exercise regimes? Where did it all start?

Perhaps, in Britain, with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, and the founding of the Royal Society the same year. Experimental science was in its infancy, leading to an accumulation of data that is added to minute by minute today. Our present King Charles III is passionate about environmental science but most separate scientific disciplines had not been established in 1667. The then King Charles II was perforce a generalist, but had some grasp of scientific method as Samuel Pepys recorded:

“I went to see a great match at tennis, between Prince Rupert and one Captain Cooke against Bab. May and the elder Chichly; where the King was, and Court; and it seems they are the best players at tennis in the nation.

”But this puts me in mind of what I observed in the morning, that the King playing at tennis had a steele-yard carried to him; and I was told it was to weigh him after he had done playing; and at noon Mr. Ashburnham told me that it is only the King’s curiosity, which he usually hath of weighing himself before and after his play, to see how much he loses in weight by playing; and this day he lost 41/2 lb.”

From The Diary of Samuel Pepys.

A steelyard, C19th engraving.

The King’s curiosity today lines him up with Scientists across the world, and also with Pope Francis who, like the King, accepts the need for great and rapid change in our way of life which devastates the earth.

3 April: Gardening with Tennyson

Does Alfred Lord Tennyson look like a gardener in that velvet jacket and brilliantly laundered shirt? I did wonder. William Allingham went to visit him at his home on the Isle of Wight on this day in 1867 and committed these reflections to his diary.

Farringford. Tennyson and I busied ourselves in the shrubberies, transplanting primroses with spade, knife and wheelbarrow. After dinner T. concocts an experimental punch with whisky and claret — not successful. Talks of Publishers, anon of higher things. He said, ‘I feel myself to be a centre — can’t believe I shall die. Sometimes I have doubts, of a morning. Time and Space appear thus by reason of our boundedness.’

We spoke of Swedenborg, animals, etc., all with the friendliest sympathy and mutual understanding. T. is the most delightful man in the world to converse with, even when he disagrees.

To my inn, where I woke in the dark, bitten, and improvised two lines —

Who in a country inn lies ill at ease
On fozy feathers filled with furious fleas.  

On 1 February Allingham had noted:
To step outside the human limitations is not granted even to [a poet]. The secret is kept from one and all of us... A poet's doubts and anxieties are more comforting than a scientist's certainties and equanimities.

At the end of this week a certain garden will feature in our reflections. Let's see if we can't tidy our own patches between now and Easter, or buy in a few pots of bulbs, primroses or pansies to celebrate the new life promised through Easter.

29 March 1878 : three ha’pence worth.

‘C’ is Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish thinker who was a friend of WIlliam Allingham, the Irish poet and editor, whose diary entry we share from this day in 1878. William Lecky was an Irish historian and politician, married to a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of the Netherlands. Friedrich Wilhelm was the German Kaiser. The illustration is from a Methodist book for children.

C. spoke of Darwinism. ‘ I don’t care three ha’pence for the Darwinian Theory.’

By and by he said, ‘ It is impossible to believe otherwise than that this world is the work of an Intelligent Mind, The Power which has formed us — He (or It — if that appears to any one more suitable) has known how to put into the human soul an ineradicable love of justice and truth.

‘The best bit for me in Kant is that saying of his, ” Two things strike me dumb with astonishment — the Starry Heavens and the Sense of Right and Wrong in the Human Soul.” These physical gentlemen ought to be struck dumb if they properly consider the nature of the Universe.’

Mrs. Lecky suggested that investigation as well as reverence was natural to man, and would not Mr. Carlyle permit inquiry ?

‘Oh yes,’ he said (half jestingly), ‘ man is full of curiosity — but I would order these people to say as little as possible. Friedrich Wilhelm’s plan would be the right one with them, ” Hold your tongue or else — ” ‘

My impression of scientists is that many of them do indeed have a sense of reverence as well as the instinct for investigation. We owe a great deal of whatever security we have to the work of scientists. The young surgeon who spoke to me after operating on my brain described his awe at seeing my brain within my opened skull: a privileged view of human life shared by very few people. He was all but lost for words.

4 December, Advent Light V: In the beginning.

It’s a while since we heard from Fr James Kurzynski, the astronomer and parish priest, scientist and theologian. He’s been reading Pope Benedict and reflects on his reading in this article.

This extract is from the beginning; do follow the link for a most interesting lead.

Reflecting on Genesis 1:20-24, Benedict XVI (writing then as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) begins with a beautiful summary of two, core realisations about the Creation narratives and the Church’s authentic understanding of them.*

We can sum up the first in this way: As Christians we read Holy Scripture with Christ. He is our guide all the way through it. He indicates to us in reliable fashion what an image is and where the real, enduring content of a biblical expression may be found. At the same time he is freedom from a false slavery to literalism and a guarantee of the solid, realistic truth of the Bible, which does not dissipate into a cloud of pious pleasantries but remains the sure ground upon which we can stand. Our second realisation was this: Faith in creation is reasonable. Even if reason itself cannot perhaps give an account of it, it searches in faith and finds there the answer that it had been looking for.

*In the Beginning.: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Eerdmans New York, 1995, p21.

7 September, Going Viral CVIII: The universe disturbed.

Brother Guy Consolmagno was meant to be addressing an astronomy conference recently, but a mild case of covid meant that he had to do so remotely, though he’d already arrived in Scotland, ready, or so he thought, to speak about meteorites. He reflects on his experience: (follow the link for the full text).

I’ve lost track of how many Covid “waves” this has been, but unlike the last waves there has been no uptick in deaths this time. Still, it’s no fun having your travel plans disturbed by disease, even after you’ve taken all the recommended precautions. Some forty-plus years ago, the brilliant engineer Freeman Dyson wrote a book called Disturbing the Universe and the title alone would make it memorable. (The rest of the book’s pretty good, too.) Each of us has had to endure having our universes disturbed, by causes big or small. And each of us in turn disturbs the universe as well. We can’t help but poke and prod… sometimes with spacecraft, sometimes with prayer. It’s a universe that was created to be disturbed. Thanks for your continued prayers and support, and know that you also have mine!