“In these days of great trouble and unrest…let people look to the stars for comfort.” So said Annie Jump Cannon, astronomer, who lived from1863-1941. I should have liked to have known her, I think, especially during the semester when I nearly failed my own college astrophysics course. Not easy stuff to get your head around! But Annie Jump Cannon did. This native of Dover, Delaware, graduated from Wellesley College in1884, received her Master’s in 1907, an honorary doctorate from the University of Delaware, the first woman to receive an honorary degree from Oxford—a little over a century after the Wesleys were there—as well as an honorary doctorate from Wellesley College in 1925.
In 1896 Annie Jump Cannon was hired by Professor Edward Charles Pickering, director of the Harvard College Observatory, to catalogue variable stars and classify the spectra of southern stars. The many women on staff were referred to as “computers” because they handled star classification and complex data reduction. You see, long before the electronic computer was invented in the 1940’s, the word “computer” was applied to humans — people who did the computations necessary for scientific work. And Annie Cannon was good at it. She was able to classify over a quarter of a million stars based on measurements of their spectra with great speed and accuracy.
“In these days of great trouble and unrest…let people look to the stars for comfort,” she said. What was the trouble and unrest of her time? There had been trouble in her early life, when as a child she became deaf as a result of serious illness. But there was trouble in the world, too. She had lived through the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Battle of Little Big Horn, the first Boer War, the Assassination of President Garfield, a major hurricane in Galveston that killed 8,000 people, the first use of airplanes as offensive weapons, the sinking of the Lusitania passenger liner, the First World War, the Russian revolution, the flu epidemic, the rise of Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, the discovery of oil in Iraq, the Great Depression, the Spanish Civil War…
“In these days of great trouble and unrest…let people look to the stars for comfort.”
Some mornings, the newspaper is still just too much to bear, in our time, just as in hers. Still the same kinds of things. Always more news than we can assimilate and carry in our hearts and minds. Wars and rumors of wars. Death and betrayal. Natural disasters.
There’s a new book out called Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear which is very helpful but which seems to try and make the point that our time is more fearful than other times have been. But as I thought about Annie Jump Cannon and the times in which she lived, or the times in which Mary and Joseph lived when the baby Jesus was to be born, those horrible times of Roman occupation and terror, I thought, well…maybe the gospel message isn’t so radical in our time, after all. Maybe its power is meant for every generation, every time of fear, every moment when it seems that the darkness could swallow us up once and for all. Maybe the light cast by its candle is still enough. Enough to hold the darkness at bay. Enough to remind us all that the truth of God will always prevail.
You know, if you’re new to church in this season, or maybe back just to check it out, you may not know the meaning of the season of Advent or of the Advent Wreath. The four Sundays of Advent, the Sundays leading into Christmas, have for centuries been set aside in the church as a time of spiritual deepening, a time for getting in touch with our own deep yearning for God and our longing for the light. To help us mark the time and pace it out week by week, it is customary to light the candles of the Advent wreath on successive Sundays. If you come up close after the service and look, you’ll see that the design of the wreath is a circle with spokes and holders for four candles as well as the larger white center Christ Candle which will be added on Christmas Eve. The shape of the wreath comes from an ancient custom of removing a wagon wheel, when the harvest is in, and turning it on its side. So, our Advent wreath in the form of a wheel also symbolizes the stopping of work. The wagon at rest. A pause in time to be still. A moment to linger under the night sky and to look for the stars.
“In these days of great trouble and unrest…let people look to the stars for comfort.”
In our days of trouble and unrest, God finds a great variety of ways to rekindle the light within us, if we would just pause and pay attention. As the Psalmist said, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Take that wheel off the wagon and lay it down. Stop. Rest. Listen.
The cold I’ve had over this last week or so got me thinking about an Advent several years ago when I was in my first year as superintendent of our United Methodist Churches on the San Diego District. It had been a tumultuous first few months, one crisis after another, some of them notorious enough to have been covered in the newspaper. I caught a cold, which descended into a horrific cough, and I finally went to the doctor, pleading, only half-jokingly, to be told I had something just serious enough to send me to bed for a couple days. He listened to my lungs and said: “How about ‘walking pneumonia?’ Here’s a prescription for some antiobiotics. I want you to make two stops on your way home. One at a pharmacy to get this filled and one at a video store where I want you to rent two funny movies. Then go home, unplug the phone, take your medicine and watch the movies and laugh! You’ll feel much better in a week or so.”
He was a young doctor, but boy was he wise! Totally unbeknownst to me, he, an active Presbyterian, had been reading about our Methodist troubles and praying for me, he told me. Through him, God found a way to take the wheel off my wagon and to bring some light into my darkness. And I spent the best Advent ever, with lots of quiet time to savor the blessings of the season.
Most of us aren’t so lucky at this time of year, I know, if you call that “lucky.” We get all stressed by the season itself which began way back sometime in early October, according to the department stores. We’re worn-out, by a season full of too much to do, too many parties and social events to attend, additional events with the kids, travel arrangements, food preparation, gifts to buy, heavier work-loads at year end, and all the emotional baggage inherent in the holidays.
Take the wheel off the wagon? Sounds more like the nightmare of a blow-out on the freeway than the gift of light!
Well, as I said, God finds a ways to rekindle the light within us. God seems to know just what sort of darkness has entered into our souI and find a way to rekindle the light within.
I want to share with you a story from a United Methodist pastor, James Howell, writing in a recent issue of the Christian Century. It’s a story we can all relate to, for all those times we have felt small and inadequate to the task, doubting the meaning and purpose of our life, or wondering about our faith and if any of it really makes a difference, fearing that maybe the light has gone out.
The first line of his story grabs you right away: “The reason I am still in the ministry is because of the night I decided to leave the ministry.” Rev. Howell was called to the hospital on his day off with an urgent message from some young parents in his congregation. Their baby girl, baptized just a few weeks earlier, had just been diagnosed with a tumor between the base of her brain and spinal cord. Rev. Howell describes his feelings of inadequacy as the long day wears on, the baby crying and screaming, the parents distraught with fear. His words of comfort seemed so very inadequate. Haven’t we all felt just that way in the face of something so big and so frightening?
When the pediatric oncologist came in, calm, knowledgeable, and impressive, and consulted with the young parents, the pastor said he felt that if he had just done that with his life, something useful, something truly helpful, he could have really made a difference. Had I gone to medical school, he thought, I would have had something of real substance to offer.
By the end of the day, the parents were exhausted and asked if he would mind holding their baby for a bit while they stepped out for some air and a walk. He sat down in the rocking chair and the baby cried, and he cried, and she cried more until she finally wore herself out. And when the parents returned some bit of time later, they found her sound asleep, cradled in his loving arms.
And then, he said, as he slipped out into the cool night air and looked up to the sky, he knew that his calling had been fulfilled, the beautiful smallness of it all becoming its glory.
“In these days of great trouble and unrest…let people look to the stars for comfort.”
Friends, we have all known trouble and unrest of many kinds—in our own lives and in the lives of those we dearly love. In our community and in our world. The needs are great. The problems often deep and resistant to change.
But precisely in the midst of it all, into whatever darkness of life we might be experiencing, comes the ancient promise of light and hope.
Again in these precious days of Advent, we all so need to find some moments to take the wheel off the wagon and lay it down. We all need some moments to step outside in the cool night air and look up to the stars. We all need to gaze again upon the light of this candle and know that indeed, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it.
In these days, may you find your way to this place, again and again. May you find your way to the house of God. To the place where the light is always kindled. Where the light cast by its candle is still enough. Enough to hold the darkness at bay. Enough to remind us all that the truth of God will always prevail.
Come home, that the light may again be kindled in you and you shall know, as if for the first time, the God who comes in tender mercy, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet in the way of peace.
Amen.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"Walk in the Light"