Mary van Balen

(Originally published in the Catholic Times, September 9, 2012 © 2012 Mary van Balen)

I write these words of the night of the Blue Moon. The last one we will see for a few years, it is most commonly defined as the second full moon in a month. (This is not the only definition, but perhaps the simplest.) This is also the day Neil Armstrong, first human being to set foot on the moon, was buried in Cincinnati. This conjunction of events seems fitting, and when I looked up at the moon peeking through clouds, I thought of the long years of research, planning, building, and training that preceded the first “leap for mankind.” Without such sacrifice, such disciplined use of time and energy, the momentous step would not have been taken.

Thursday’s readings for the Liturgy of the Hours address the importance of using time well and avoiding self-indulgence. Saint Paul, in Galatians 5, says we are “called to liberty,” and then warned his readers to be careful since “liberty will provide and opening for self-indulgence.” The Spirit calls us to be busy about “works of love,” but we do not always rise to the occasion. At least I don’t.

I had some time off work and following a few days of concentrated effort, I confess to accomplishing little today. I did use food I had on hand to make tomato sauce and bake the eggplant that was on the verge of spoiling. I cleaned the kitchen. I did a little writing, but not as much as I had hoped. I had good intentions, but according to Paul, since the temptation to self- indulgence is at odds with the Spirit, “you do not always carry out your good intentions.” That’s me. Read More 

PHOTO: Reuters/BP Live Video Feed

The AP article written by Colleen Long and Matthew Daly is one among many that mention the need to monitor the sea bed in the Gulf for possible leaks resulting from undetected damage to BP's well deep under the ocean floor that may be exacerbated by increased pressure caused by capping the well.

Until the past few days, I had not considered effects capping the well would have other than finally shutting down the gushing plumes of oil fouling the Gulf. Why was the news that the sea floor itself could be compromised surprising? It is logical, and it points to a reality we too often overlook: Everything in our world, in the universe, in interconnected; Everything. Read More 

DIAGRAM: SKY & TELESCOPE
At 10:30pm, having closed our register, covered the display cases, and deposited our cash envelopes, three of us walked out of the store into fresh air. A brilliant spot of light hung on the night's black sky, looking not unlike the large cubic zirconium stone in a necklace I sold to a young bride-to-be a few hours earlier. One woman waved goodbye and headed for her car. Diana and I stood for a moment, mesmerized by the sight.

"It's Venus," I said in hushed tones reserved for moments of overwhelming glory. Read More 

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.

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PHOTO: NASA - KEPLER FIELD OF VIEW

Last Thursday I noticed a news release about NASA’s Kepler Mission that is searching a small part of our galaxy to locate planets orbiting its star in a “habitable zone,” planets that could be capable of supporting life. We are looking for extraterrestrials.

As one who has long hoped that intelligent life exists on other planets and that connection with ET’s would happen in my lifetime, the article was intriguing. I am a Star Trek fan and enjoy watching science fiction movies and reading books that deal with “encounters of the third kind.” For reasons unknown, I imagine ET’s as peaceful, intelligent creatures who would have something to teach our warring, violent race.

Such images have been fed not only by movies, but also by a couple of my favorite authors: Madeleine L’Engle and C. S. Lewis. In L’Engle’s groundbreaking novel, “A Wrinkle in Time,” Charles Wallace and Meg Murray and their friend Calvin rescued Mr. Murray from a horrible planet, Camazotz, and traveled to different planets by “tessering” or moving along wrinkles in the time/space continuum.

Once, Meg, Calvin, and Mr. Murray found themselves on a strange planet where the inhabitants were beasts covered with soft fur and who had long tentacles instead of eyes or a mouth. Despite their differences, the earthlings and beasts were able to communicate. The beasts healed Meg who arrived frozen from her travel and revealed that they, too, were fighting the blackness that was in control of Camazotz and threatened the universe. I loved reading that chapter out loud to my fourth grade students, and we fell in love with the beats who had no eyes but who knew more than their human guests with the sense of sight.

The Narnia Chronicles, a seven volume fantasy written in the 1950’s by C. S. Lewis, features four English children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy who wander into the world of Narnia through the back of an old wardrobe fashioned from wood of a magic tree. Aslan the lion is the central character in all seven volumes, the creator and ruler of Narnia, a divine presence.

In “The Magician’s Nephew,” still pools in the “wood between the worlds” are portals through which characters are transported to different worlds. As I read and re-read this book, images of meeting creatures from places utterly foreign to my own played in my mind.

At the end of “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” when Aslan tells Lucy and Edmund they are too old to return to Narnia and must become more involved in their own world, Lucy cries at the thought of not being with Aslan again: "It isn't Narnia, you know," sobbed Lucy. "It's you. We shan't meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?"

"But you shall meet me, dear one," said Aslan.

"Are -- are you there too, Sir?" said Edmund.

"I am," said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name.”


"How many names does God have?" I wonder while contemplating the thought that somewhere in the universe, other creatures have been made to have a relationship with the Holy One, the Creator, the One we cannot limit by our imaginations. The One whose love is so great that it cannot be poured out only to human beings, but could well fashion others to share in the joy of receiving the infinite desire of God to give God’s self away.

How could such a belief or hope threaten faith? The news release, written Jan 7, 2010 by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press, mentioned Rev. Jose Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, commenting on the annual American Astronomical Society conference last week: “These are big questions that reflect upon the meaning of the human race in the universe.”

In a May 14, 2008 interview published in L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, responding to a question about whether belief in extraterrestrials would create problem for faith, Funes said, “I believe no. As a multiplicity of creatures exist on earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. This does not contrast with our faith because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God. To say it with Saint Francis, if we consider earthly creatures as “brother” and “sister,” why cannot we also speak of an “extraterrestrial brother?” It would therefore be a part of creation.”

I am in good company and wish the Kepler Mission Godspeed and good luck!

PHOTO: NASA - April 16, 2009, STAR CLUSTER NGC 6791 FROM KEPLER FIRST LIGHT IMAGE  Read More 

IMAGE: ADORATION OF THE MAGI by Giotto

One Epiphany long ago my mother smiled when I asked her, "Where's the other Wise Guy?" and replied that he had been lost during our recent move. As I played with the camels, sheep and two mysterious "kings," I hoped the third one had found a new home, someplace warm to spend Christmas. Imagine, following a star to find baby Jesus, a baby whose birth was acknowledged by the forces in the far flung universe.

Later, I learned that Matthew's gospel (the only one that mentions the magi) was short on details and what I learned as a child was as much legend as anything else. No Matter. Three astrologers searching through Hebrew Scriptures looking for an explanation for an amazing cosmological event still captures my imagination. Even the Pope today used them as an metaphor for the compatibility of science and faith.

The Epiphany is celebrated in Christian churches as the first time Jesus was revealed to the wide world beyond Bethlehem and Judaism. The wise men represent all the rest of humanity at the manger, foreshadowing the reality that took the disciples and perhaps even Jesus some time to figure out: God's love is for all people. We are all children of the Most High.

Today, as I drove to the doctor's office for a check-up, I paid particular attention to people who were out on the cold, snowy morning: A father at a bus stop, a modern shepherd with his flock of four children, one in a stroller, carefully bundled against the wind; a man wearing a black stocking cap pulled low over his ears, his hands shoved into his pockets to stay warm; a young woman munching an apple for breakfast, a backpack slung over her shoulder, waiting for a ride to campus; people driving cars I passed or that passed by me on the freeway.

I tried to look with wise men's eyes, seeing God's beloved braving the elements to be about the work of their daily lives. "Each one," I told myself, "holds some bit of God in their hearts." Like the wise men, I should honor them, for who they are, for the Divinity that enlivens them from within.I should offer my gifts, as simple as they are, joining in the effort to bring the world a little closer to the Kingdom ushered in by a baby.

"Where's the other Wise Guy?" She is here. He is each one of us.  Read More 

Finally, we have snow. Though wet and only two inches deep, it is white and beautiful. Christmas was all rain, and I admit to envying my Minnesota friends’ two feet of powder, view across the lake, and Mass in the Abbey Church. After exchanging Christmas greetings over the phone, I hung up and switched my computer wallpaper to last winter's photo taken out the apartment’s back window. Blue tree shadows fell across the snow-covered lake and patio; January at the Institute was breathtaking.

This year I was in Ann Arbor for the holidays. I did not have the view and was careful as I stepped over water flowing beside the curb when getting in and out of the car, but I had my three daughters, a good friend, and time: Better than snow.

We ate homemade oxtail vegetable soup and snacked on imported cheeses and crackers washed down with spiced red wine. The apartment was crowded; one daughter had to excuse herself a few times to complete marking final papers and posting grades. Another daughter had switched to her “break” schedule: up until early morning, asleep until early afternoon, but we had a good time playing Apples to Apples and catching up.

Most gifts were simple this year, many were practical with a few surprises thrown in. One of mine was unexpected and extraordinary: A hand-thrown mug from The Soft Earth’s potter, Joan Lederman. The form is beautiful and organic, but what makes it unique is the glaze. Joan uses core samples of the ocean floor taken by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. When they have finished with the sediment, it is given to Joan who uses it for her glazes.

On my Christmas mug, the words “Deep Down, Far Out, Earth Crust, Space Dust” encircle the bottom, written on bare clay. The predominant glaze color is deep brown, resulting from sediment from The Kane Fracture Zone, rich in manganese, peridotite, serpentine, basalt, and olivine gabbro. A small band of lighter brown divides the glaze about one third of the way down the mug. This strip of glaze is what merits the words “Far Out…Space Dust.”

In a core sample taken at the K-Trace Boundary, scientists found a small deposit of 65 million year old remains of an asteroid, truly star dust. Was this left from asteroids that collided with the earth raising enough dust to block sunlight and lead to mass extinctions of plants and animals, including the dinosaurs?

In response to the sudden death of a pioneering geologist, Joan offered to make a piece to celebrate his life. She was given sediment from his work discovering the first core that demonstrated the iridium anomaly from the K-T Band. Later she came to appreciate it alongside samples from drillings into Earth’s crust – these became the “earth crust & space dust” pieces. When I first found them on the Internet, I emailed my archeologist daughter to share the amazing find. As a young child, she had been interested in dinosaurs, once taking a survey at a local mall to determine what most people thought caused the extinction of dinosaurs. An Asteroid strike was among the choices.

Knowing my spiritual response to all things “cosmic,” she and her younger sister decided to purchase one of Joan Lederman's last two “Space Dust” mugs for me. Now, when I drink my tea in the morning, I will be cradling earth crust and stardust in my hands, contemplating the glory of the universe and my small place in it.

Visit The Soft Earth website: http://www.thesoftearth.com/

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