By Nii B. Andrews.
The new year arrived in a low key manner especially for those of us who take its challenges seriously; new vaccine, new variant, possibly a new government….
We shall exhale and take it all in stride; we shall not sweat the small stuff.
Things have begun well.
There was a lovely wedding on the second day of the year.
Seeing my good friend, Oluphonic Soundz poised at the West door of the Ridge Church ready to escort his eldest daughter, who was fully resplendent in her bridal gown, to the altar almost brought me to tears.
Such is the abundant grace under which we live.
Over fifty years earlier we were just boys being dropped off by our parents to attend Sunday School in our dark grey wool St. Michael’s shorts on the same church grounds.
Meanwhile, a team of astronomers from Tokyo University using the Keck I telescope brought us a tad nearer to answering the question, “How big is the universe?”
While focusing on an ancient galaxy, GN-z11, they found that it is not only the oldest galaxy but also the most distant.
It’s so distant it defines the very boundary of the observable universe itself.
The location?
13.4 billion light years, or 134 nonillion kilometers (that’s 134 followed by 30 zeros).
For the author Robert Streeter, the modern telescope “displays a universe of such amazing beauty and wonder that the human mind has difficulty in comprehending the whole.
Its images confirm the universe to be a work of Art, and it beckons us, to go where no-one has gone before, and it prepares us for further astonishment”.
In recent times, our knowledge and technological power has led us to wonders and benefits – MRI, minimally invasive surgery, 5G; it is also led to a revelation of catastrophes and dangers.
The artist Malika Squalii muses: “Our soul is itself contained in another landscape.
The one that is a physical boundary and link with the outside in a sensory geography.
This physical body lets us touch, be touched and to enter the tangible and playful enactment of it all.
A new Playground that expands us.”
Now, who in these difficult and perilous times can doubt that we are upon a journey of discovery; both within and without – beautiful, amazing and mysterious; perhaps, a moving stillness in a universe awash with light and order?
In order to reconnect, recalibrate, reboot; Squalli confesses, “I become a firefly, those whimsical pixies of the night, guardians of the beauty of the world at a time when we need it most.”