Colliding Galaxies II 10-12-12

Anderson, South Carolina

If one gets far above Earth’s atmosphere with a very good telescope one is privy to a fascinating phenomenon – colliding galaxies. Galaxies a hundred thousand light years in diameter are being drawn into each other by their mutual gravitational attraction. The resulting images are often astounding in their emotional impact. NASA’s orbiting Chandra Observatory has taken a compelling image of two large spiral galaxies in the first stages of collision. One can only wonder at the explosive result occurring when two objects of immense size collide with each other while moving far faster than speeding bullets. One would expect ultimate fireworks.

Anyone living on a planet circling a star in either galaxy will never notice. The more prosaic reality for the most part is … nothing. No fireworks at all. Galaxies consist of mostly nothing, empty space and a small amount of cosmic dust. Stars are so far apart from each other as to reduce the probability of them ever colliding to near zero. Night skies on a million unnamed planets are likely to be little changed.

Our own Milky Way Galaxy and our nearest galactic neighbor, the beautiful spiral Andromeda galaxy, are on a collision course, expected to have an uneventful collision in about 4.5 billion years. Whoever is on the planets circling stars in either galaxy will yawn and go back to sleep.

A couple days ago I went to visit a church in my neighborhood. I’ve often visited this church during the last ten years. I once rather enjoyed a six-week study series and dinner offered twice a year; being well acquainted with many of the members attending there. This week I left feeling like I was but a star passing in the night, something no one would ever notice.

Orbital mechanics produce very reliable predictions about the interactions or non-interactions one can expect to occur as two galaxies move into each other’s gravitational fields. Christian scriptures offer predictions as to how those professing a shared faith are expected to interact. These writings suggest a high level of interaction can be anticipated, interactions producing mutual encouragement, community, accountability, safety, purpose, and a sense of belonging. Unlike stars which will never interact, save being influenced by gravitational fields operating at vast distances, scriptures suggest those of shared faith should be interacting deeply at short personal distances.

As I left that church I thought about my life and the lives of dozens of members I encountered over ham and potatoes. At one time many of these lives were almost as bright as blue-white pulsating quasars in my life. Some of these lives shined brilliantly for me while I was in my own dark night of the soul. Alas, it seems so many of us have passed out of each other’s gravitational and spiritual influence. The interactions I had Wednesday night with these people were breathtaking in the same way colliding galaxies are breathtaking – nothing happened. The barest snippets of social politeness gave way to recession. As stars speed to and from each other, I found these lives speeding right by me with no mutual interaction having taken place.

I’ve noticed for years an ever-increasing tendency for people in churches to accelerate right past each other at ever increasing speeds. Churches have become intermediate stops and not final destinations. Orbital mechanics and plain-old Newtonian physics speak of the conservation of angular momentum. The faster things go the more likely they are to go in very straight lines, not veering off to make turns or new trajectories. People moving too fast in their frantic lives will be unable to make turns or interact with those lives around them, too fixed on going in straight lines to unknown destinations in space. To understand and experience the conservation of angular momentum directly, try making a right turn in a car at 100 MPH. That’s the conservation of angular momentum.

We live in a culture programming us to travel at very high rates of speed on auto-pilot. So many of us have no conscious conception of our final destinations and dissipate our momentum collecting ballast of a thousand kinds. As we accumulate ever-increasing amounts of consumer detritus on our lives, it takes ever more energy to maintain culturally-mandate momentum to stay ahead of those around us. Eventually our lives explode as spiritual and emotional super-nova. We expand greatly and then collapse suddenly to become little more than a small brown dwarf star with no heat or life.

In my work with those in addiction I see a powerful phenomenon at work, one the church would greatly benefit from embracing. Individuals passing at high speed through the dark night of addiction and alcoholism come to understand it’s essential for them to slow down, make turns, and find new trajectories in their lives. The culture of recovery often reminds its members of the absolute need to slow down, stop and reassess one’s life trajectories on a daily basis. As important, precepts of recovery suggest those sharing newfound faith in a Higher Power should be interacting deeply at short personal distances. Founders of the recovery movement understood the realities of spiritual mechanics as thoroughly as did those deducing orbital mechanics.

As often happens when I leave churches, I wonder how there can still be so much darkness with so many bright lights drawn into each other’s proximity by shared faith in the One who created all the stars in the first place. I wonder why there’s still so much darkness in the church when we’re ostensibly drawn into the Presence of the brightest Star of all.

In my voyages around the world I often visit churches, cathedrals, and basilicas. Ever increasingly I find they have gone super-nova and are now small brown dwarfs with no measurable influence on anybody near them. Too often they are locked up tight, converted into pubs, private residences, libraries, or most commonly, tourist traps to attract and collect amazing amounts of money.

I’m reminded of Jesus’ warning recorded in John’s gospel. Jesus replied, “The light is with you for only a little while. Walk while you have the light so that darkness doesn’t overtake you. Those who walk in the darkness don’t know where they are going.” If we slow down from our high speed careening through secular culture, get still, and know God, we have a chance of changing direction and reaching destinations which matter.

We might conserve far more than our angular momentum. We might just conserve our souls and sanity.

Blessings,

Craig C. Johnson