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
