I feel like there should be some sparklers or something for our 100th podcast! Did you know most people who start a podcast don’t make it past 9?

That aside, something really REALLY awesome happened this week. We have been gifted with the ability to see back in time and space via the James Webb Telescope. That we are alive in this moment, able to even whisper the words “4 billion light years away” is phenomenal. I wonder, if for the briefest of moments, if we can look out and say, “We are part of this. We are ancient stardust.” I think there is also the possibility that such a thought could be so big as to make us shrink back from it, from what this means about both the universe’s imaginations and our own, and in this incredible mechanism, they have collided. It feels like looking into the face of God.

We talk about this and many other things, including David Abram’s book Spell of the Sensuous in which he notes the phenomenon of contact, of the numionus intersection between the human and the non-human. Among my favorite passages is:

“We are formed in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth — our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human.”

Our humanness is defined by our non-humanness, in part by our ability to pursue and savor awe. We recommend this book, though go slowly with it. It is to be drunk, imbibed, savored, not rushed.

What can these incredible visions from galaxies far, far away do for our petty human divisions and wars? We are so small down here…and yet we are held in a great mystery that we are just barely able to conceive of. What do you imagine when you see these images? What do you wonder?

Thanks for listening.