Ephemeral grace

We had a visit for lunch today from Richard and Jo Hunt, on their way home from a few days of walking and camping in the Brecon Beacons. Richard was Curate of St Agnes in Bristol and welcomed me into the St Paul's Area parish in Bristol when I was made incumbent in 1975. He lived in the Vicarage top floor flat for the first couple of years we were there. These days he's a Vicar in Chichester getting ready to retire next year, hopefully to the West of England, which will make it easier to see each other. Our last reunion was when we were in Geneva, and they dropped in, en route to walk around Mont Blanc, a favourite route for hardy long distance walkers.

Tonight, one of nature's great spectaculars, the Perseid meteor shower comes to open sky everywhere. It's lovely that there's a measure of popular interest in this special phenomenon. The Meteorwatch website  invites people around the world to use Twitter to report meteor sightings and post pictures, which will then be mapped using crowd-sourcing software. It's a brilliant idea to marshal the curiosity and mass observational skills of people all over the planet, and the outcome will be a unique set of data about the material in the tail of the Swift-Tuttle comet, through which Earth passes, generating the meteor shower en passant.  

There's a delightful tongue in cheek publicity trailer promoting Meteorwatch, here on YouTube. It ends with the injunction 'Look Up', which makes me think of Luke 21:28, and apocalyptic passages about the Coming of the Son of the Man. Meteorwatch invites people across the world to scan the heavens with the expectation of being surprised and amazed by heavenly beauty. There's no desire to look beyond in search of a celestial visitor arriving to rescue humankind from the plight of a world in crisis. Yet, the heavens remain the source of so much awe and wonder. 'Look up' is an invitation to contemplate the beauty and glory of creation, to savour and delight in it without needing to interpret what we see in terms of our own perceived needs. To see just what's there is privilege enough.

We are no longer expected to search beyond for that which gives meaning and purpose to our existence. We are invited to experience creation's awe and wonder, and do whatever we will in the light of this. We are left to look into the depths of ourselves fed by this experience, and find the ultimate meaning we seek. At least, that's what I think Jesus was encouraging us to discover.

Alexander Solzhenitsin debated whether beauty could save the world, which, if I understand him aright is an assertion that any experience of beauty awakens a sense of the higher self in human beings, and reminds us of our true value, potential and calling. It is only from this foundation that humankind can curb impulses leading to chaos, destruction and ugliness, and work to heal and restore the Creator's art to its full splendour.

Whether we have a living faith in the author of all being or not, I'd like to think that looking up to the heavens in wonder has something that can inspire and nurture the souls of us all.