Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

Did you know that our solar system, right now is moving through an interstellar cloud that physics tells us should not even exist. This interstellar cloud or fluff, as astronomers affectionately call it, holds together because it is more strongly magnetized than anyone thought. Its magnetic field provides the attraction that prevents its destruction. This cloud or fluff is actually a Local Interstellar Cloud, about 30 light years wide and containing a wispy mixture of hydrogen and helium atoms all simmering at a temperature of 6000 C.

This is actually something you should remember and feel grateful for when you tuck yourself in bed tonight with the stars shining in the sky. This fluff, at the edge of our solar system, held in place by the sun’s magnetic field shields us in our inner solar system from galactic cosmic rays and interstellar clouds. Eventually our solar system will bump into other similar clouds in our arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

How do we know this? The twin Voyager spacecraft tell us so. Launched thirty-three years ago in 1977, the Voyager spacecraft continue to fly through the outer bounds of the heliosphere en route to interstellar space. They continuously send us valuable information about outer space. As Adam Frank the astronomer wrote so poetically, “It (science) brings the character of sacredness out of the profane. … It (science) is a gateway to the sacred because it brings the background of experience to the fore and forces us to consider what had been invisible.”

Our, Unitarian Universalist Living Tradition, “affirm(s) and promote(s) a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” As such, we draw from many sources for the authority upon which we build our beliefs. The first of those sources listed is our “Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life.” So it is that science is a gateway to the sacred. It reveals to us what had been up to this point invisible.

I agree with Oscar Wilde, “The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” (The Picture of Dorian Grey) I am filled with awe, wonder and the deepest sense of respect and gratitude when looking at the stars. It is for me a sacred experience in the truest sense of the word. The stars in the night sky have long been seen as sacred, holding rich symbolism and set apart for a service of worship by many varied religious traditions. Something is thought of as sacred when it is worthy of religious veneration. Something is thought of as sacred when it is held with reverence and respect.

Since the beginning of human kind, we have watched, studied and learned about the world we know. Since the beginning of human kind, we have we have been filled with wonder and dreamt of the world we do not yet fully know or understand. Stories were told to help us and help others understand life, its source, its meaning and the many forces that surround us.

There have been many different and imaginative stories told to explain how we came into being and why we are alive and why the natural world exists the way it does. The Big Bang creation story is the story that helps me understand and explain what happened at the beginning of time. Just think, it was the pattern of microwave energies first discovered through analytic research being done outside Holmdel, NJ that helped reveal the true origins of the universe. Cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the electromagnetic memory of the universe’s origin and a direct link to the time of Big Bang. CMB proved that the universe had a spectacular beginning.

Of course, there is much that is not yet understood. Physics still cannot go back to the very moment of the Big Bang. However, physicists know enough to understand what happened just a few hundredths of a second after about a teaspoon of cosmic matter weighing more than a thousand tons expanded to make our whole universe. It and everything has been expanding ever since. First appeared galaxies, then clusters of galaxies joined together and then clusters of clusters of galaxies formed out of the sea of gas. This galactic creation stretched across billions of light years.

Still, we continue to learn. Daily, the invisible becomes more visible. Our understanding of our universe and ourselves continues to expand. The Voyager, pictured on the cover of our order of service passed beyond the orbit of Pluto and Neptune in 1989 and we expect it to keep sending us information for another 25 years. This spacecraft is almost the size and weight of a subcompact car. It however has an antenna 3.7 meters in diameter, a magnetrometer boom 13 meters long, and two planetary radio astronomy and plasma wave antennae that are each 10 meters long. The twin Voyager spacecraft continue to travel at speeds relative to the sun at between 15-17 kilometers per second, going to further points in our galaxy, all the time, making the invisible visible.

Twenty years ago on Valentine’s Day, Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team, suggested that NASA use the Voyager 1 spacecraft to take a photograph of the planet Earth from a distance of 4 billion miles. The result was a picture of the earth, our home just a tiny, fragile speck of blue floating in the vastness of space. Later in a commencement address, Sagan said the following:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”