Stephen Hawking at Epiphanytide

As I wafted incense into the stable scene of the three Magi presenting their gifts to the Christchild at this morning's solemn Mass, I couldn't help but think "Rentokil fumigation at your service, my Lord", but kept it to myself, and preached about the searchers for cosmic truth finding it in the vulnerable humanity of the babe in the manger. It wasn't too hard to get in a mention of Stephen Hawking on this his seventieth birthday, even if his reverence for the mathematical order disclosed in all things makes him a worshipper of creation rather than the Creator. What his precise and disciplined creative mind actually makes of many layered Gospel story telling and interpretation is hard to imagine. He doesn't do religion. And that may be good for us, in that it challenges us to ask ourselves what religion does for me.

After Mass I had a baptism to perform. This time, a four year old girl with long blond hair and a gap toothed radiant, trusting smile which reminded me of Rhiannon at her age. What joy it would give me to baptize Rhiannon, but alas, so far, no interest. It's a matter of 'watch and pray'. After lunch Andrea from circle dance and Tai Chi dropped by for a cup of tea. It's a rare pleasure to have afternoon visitors.

I nearly made myself late for Evensong and Benediction, sitting outside St German's in the car, with the poetry programme on Radio 4, listening to a wonderful Robert Frost poem called The Star Splitter, about a country smallholder who burns down his house and spends the insurance money on a high quality telescope. He gets a job as a railroad clerk so that he has time on the night shifts to indulge his passion for the heavenlies.

The poet says to his neighbour who craves a telescope of his own

What do you want with one of those blame things?"
I asked him well beforehand. "Don't you get one!"
"Don't call it blamed; there isn't anything
More blameless in the sense of being less
A weapon in our human fight," he said.

... He had been heard to say by several:
"The best thing that we're put here for's to see;
The strongest thing that's given us to see with's
A telescope. Someone in every town
Seems to me owes it to the town to keep one.
In Littleton it may as well be me."

This poem was chosen in honour of Stephen Hawking's seventieth. Apparently, he was too poorly to attend his own birthday celebration, but followed it by a web cam link. I hope he gets to hear the poem offered in his honour.

By all medical expectations Stephen Hawking should have been dead from motor neurone disease in his twenties. Remarkably, he's lived on 45 years and with the support of the best equipment modern technology can devise, not merely to keep him alive, but continuing to be creative and communicative, even though vulnerable and trapped in his body by this disease. It's not just the will to live, but the will to live creatively and contribute as one of the great mathematicians of all time which has sustained him against all odds for so long. I'm not sure how Hawking would understand the notion of God's grace, but as a believer that all life is a divine gift, I understand his amazing persistence as a manifestion of grace, and hope he doesn't mind too much.