From “The Stargazer Who Discovered a Comet” in The UU Kids Book by Anne Fields and Charlene Brotman (Biddeford, Maine: Brotman-Marshfield, 1989); used with permission. “Afterward” from Rooftop Astronomer: A Story about Maria Mitchell by Stephanie Sammarti

NOTE: The name, Maria, is pronounced “ma-RYE-ah.”

Maria always remembered the day she helped her father time an eclipse of the sun. She used the chronometer to count down to the exact second that the moon began to block out the sun. Her father needed to send the timing report to his astronomer friends at the big Harvard University observatory, where they were collecting eclipse information from all over.

“There will be another eclipse like this in 54 years,” said father.

“I’m twelve now, I’ll be 66 then!” exclaimed Maria. How could astronomers know so far ahead what would happen in the sky? How amazing that the stars and planets spun around in such order!

“I want to study the stars, always!” decided Maria one day. “I want to be an astronomer!”

“Father, can only men be astronomers?” she asked.

Father thought for a moment, while Maria watched his face anxiously. He knew that no matter how smart a girl was, she could not get into any college in the United States to study astronomy. Only boys were allowed to go to college in those days.

Finally he said, “There are no women astronomers in America. There are only a few in the entire world, but I do think it’s possible, Maria. I will teach thee all I know about astronomy. Cousin Walter has scientific books he might let thee read. Thee will need to study mathematics. That is as important to astronomy as the telescope. Yes, I do think it is possible thee could be an astronomer.”

“Oh, I will study, father, I will!” cried Maria joyfully, hugging her father.

True to her word, Maria spent long hours studying geometry and trigonometry in a tiny room at the foot of the attic stairs . . .

Maria still spent most evenings studying the sky with the telescope and keeping careful records on the stars. One night she saw a fuzzy spot through the telescope that she had never seen before. Quickly she checked the charts to see if a star was supposed to be in that place in the sky. No star was ever there. Could it be a new comet?

“Father, come up and look quick!” she shouted. Her father dashed up the attic stairs to the roof and peered carefully through the telescope.

“Thee’s discovered a comet above the North Star!” he exclaimed. “We must write immediately to the Harvard Observatory and tell them! A comet is named for the person who discovers it first but the discovery doesn’t count unless it is reported to an observatory.”

They wrote the letter that very night, but to their dismay, a storm at sea delayed the mail in leaving the island for two days. Soon the comet was also sighted by someone in Italy, then in England and in Germany. The King of Denmark had promised a gold medal to the first person who discovered a comet that could be seen only through a telescope. Would Maria miss getting the medal because her report was late? Months went by while this was being decided!

Finally one day a package arrived for Maria from the King of Denmark. It was the gold medal! Now Maria was famous. She was the first woman in the world to have a comet named after her!

Women all over America were so proud of Maria that they collected money for a new, larger telescope for her. How excited she was! Now she could learn so much more about the stars and planets!

Maria’s life changed in 1865 when a wealthy man named Matthew Vassar had the courage to start a college for women — Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York.

People called Matthew Vassar an old fool. They said girls didn’t need a college education, they just needed to know how to sew and do housework and maybe play the piano a little. College would ruin them for doing housework.

There were ministers who thundered, “It’s against the will of God for girls to go to college! It will break up families and destroy the country!”

In spite of such talk, Matthew Vassar wanted Maria to come and teach astronomy! She could have an observatory with the third largest telescope on the continent.

“Father, how can I do this?” said Maria softly, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “I’ve never even been to college myself!” She was also thinking, “If I’m not any good at it, then people will say, “This proves that women have no business teaching in colleges!”

“Thee can do it, and do it well,” said her father. “Thee should have no fears.”

He was right. Maria’s students loved her. The other professors just expected the students to sit and listen to them talk, but Maria taught her students to question everything and experiment, and to think for themselves.

Afterward

In 1986 another young woman discovered a comet. Working at Mount Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California, Christine Wilson had equipment and techniques at her disposal undreamed of in Maria’s time. At the start of her career, she had a knowledge of astronomy surpassing all that Maria learned in a lifetime of study.

But Christine Wilson’s discovery, while exciting and well publicized, did not catapult her into sudden fame as Maria’s had. New comets are not headline news. Thanks to pioneers like Maria, neither are women astronomers. Women now occupy important positions in the scientific community. Side by side with their male colleagues, they fight disease, predict the weather, design computers, and continue to discover comets. Maria Mitchell would be pleased.

 

From Session 2 of the Toolbox of Faith Curriculum, part of the Tapestry of Faith Curriculum offerings from the UUA. Find the complete curriculum here.

Twenty inches isn’t all that high. It’s less than two feet. My daughter was 20 and ½ inches long when she was born. But when you are staring at a black box twenty inches high and you’re supposed to jump on top of it and land on your feet and you’ve never done anything like that in your entire life, it feels impossible.

It feels like if you were actually able to get on top of the box, you would immediately fall backwards, crack your head, become a spectacle.

I will never forget the triumph I felt when I jumped onto the 20 inch box at my gym for the first time. I was so afraid of falling that I asked another woman to stand behind me. I didn’t need her. My arms went back behind me, my legs bent strong, and I was up! I stood tall on that box and felt like I could do anything in the world.

That feeling came rushing back the other when I watched another woman, new to the gym, conquer the box. She had been eyeing it during the whole class, doing her jumps on a lower step. I could tell she wanted to try the higher box but was afraid to do so, just as I had been. At the end of class, she practiced on the step one more time and then, determined, stood in front of the box. She took a deep breath. Her arms went back, her legs bent strong and she was up! She threw her arms up in delight, let out a yell, and we all cheered.

We knew the feeling: fears faced, doubt banished, power coursing through a body we are learning to trust, to delight in, to love.

Twenty inches is higher than we think.

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

“You owe
Me.”

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.
~Hafiz, 14th century Sufi poet

“It may be that we have lost sight of our mission. Primarily, the church is not for social or political pronouncements, nor for the fashioning and dissemination of erudite philosophical doctrines. It is for the generation of love. The church is the only institution in society so purposed. We strike at the heart of our very purpose for existence when we neglect that major aim.” ~ Albert Ziegler wrote, 20th century Universalist minister

Beloveds, each morning we are asked to take a moral stand on the side of love. May we find the courage and compassion to love like the sun, to generate love in abundance for a world that sorely needs it.

Each time that I facilitate conversations on systemic oppression and solidarity, I am struck anew at how programed we are to defensiveness and denial. Each time, my challenge is to love, simply love. We are not machines, broken and in need of fixing. We are wounded warriors in the struggle of life and we need, each of us, compassionate love to call us to our whole and holy selves.

May we wake each day with the mission to generate love in this world as humbly and faithfully as the sun generates light. May we trust that we can lean on each other for comfort when the struggle is relentless. May we know in the bones of our bones that we are not alone. May this knowledge give us the courage to shine the light of compassion on everyone. No exceptions.

{Editor’s Note: Due to technical difficulties, this post, originally scheduled for August 19th, was delayed – posting now!}

I spent two weeks out of state, mostly away from the internet, TV, and newspapers – enjoying some much needed study leave.  Returning to the news of the world on Thursday, August 14th was, I confess, quite an incredibly jarring experience.

The depth and the breadth of the systemic racism in Ferguson, Missouri revealed both in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager and the assault on the protesters demanding accountability for his murder at the hands of the law, the ongoing deaths in Gaza even in the midst of cease-fires, the President’s announcement that we are reentering Iraq, increasing violent deaths in the Ukraine, Syria, Honduras…  and at home, the second weekend of August was an especially bloody one in New Orleans, as six shootings across the city left five people dead and wounded 11 human beings, including a 2 year old, a 4 year old and a 13 year old…

Dear Ones, today my heart is broken and I am trying to do the faithful work of making sure that it is broken open, to make room for more and more love.

…

In my time away, I finished reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s portrait of doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer. Dr. Farmer is an extraordinary human being who has spent much of his life both among the most profoundly poor people in the world and in the halls of ‘the Brigham’ and Harvard in Boston.   Haiti is where the organization he founded, Partners in Health, did its first work and where it still maintains its flagship project, the hospital called Zanmi Lasante, (Haitian Creole for Partners in Health).

As the book concludes, author Tracy Kidder “notes Farmer’s fondness for a particular phrase: “the long defeat.” At one point he quotes Dr. Farmer:

 “I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory. . . . You know, people from our background — like you, like most Partners In Health-ers, like me — we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.”

Commenting on Kidder’s work, Professor Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College wrote:

 “It seems to me that this philosophy of history, if we may call it that, is the ideal one for anyone who has exceptionally difficult, frustrating, even agonizing, but nevertheless vitally important work to do. For such people, the expectation of victory can be a terrible thing — it can raise hopes in (relatively) good times only to shatter them when the inevitable downturn comes. Conversely, the one who fights the long defeat can be all the more thankful for victories, even small ones, precisely because (as St. Augustine said about ecstatic religious experiences) he or she does not expect them and is prepared to live without them….”

Now I have been recently described as ruthlessly optimistic –and while I’m still not quite sure how I feel about that description — it did highlight for me the need to be explicit about our call to do the work of justice.  Friends, we do not work for justice because we know that we are going to win.  We work for justice because it is the ethical thing to do, the loving thing to do, the merciful, compassionate, and faithful thing to do.

If and when you feel overwhelmed by all the healing that must be done, by the sheer volume of injustice present in any one news cycle – I invite you to breathe in and breathe out.  Remember that you are not alone. We who have only begun to imagine justice and mercy, let us not give up if we are comfortably devastated and can afford to despair.  Let us be in solidarity with those whom the dominant culture treats as losers, let us join in the fighting the long defeat with love, compassion, courage and peace that passes understanding.

Together we bend the long arc of the universe toward justice that we may not live to see, but which we must struggle for because it is the faithful thing to do.

{PS – There is a gathering in New Orleans planned for September 26-28, 2014 for those wanting to live missional, justice-making lives and who are looking for a beloved community to connect with on the journey.  Learn more here https://www.facebook.com/LifeOnFireTribe and here http://lifeonfirenola2014.wordpress.com/ }

 

 

We learned from the Beatles that Eleanor Rigby “keeps her face in a jar by the door.” Clearly the Fab Four thought that was not a good thing to do. But what were they critiquing? Was it where Eleanor kept her face? Or that she had a “face to meet the faces that we meet” at all? Should we wear the same face all the time? Is one of our faces the “true” one?

Whether or not there’s noise when a tree falls in the forest, a more pertinent question for us is whether or not we have a face, a personality, when no one is around to experience it. This is why Eleanor Rigby’s plight haunts us still. We know she’s out there. We don’t want to become her. We fear that she is faceless. We fear that for ourselves.

Most of us wish perhaps that we were like the stone imagined by Emily Dickinson,

How happy is the little Stone

That rambles in the Road alone,

And doesn’t care about Careers

And Exigencies never fears—

 Perhaps we wish to be,

 

. . . independent as the Sun

In our hearts, however, we know very well that we are creatures dependent upon others of our kind. And that’s scary.

 

Interactions Are Us

In the Nineteenth Century, US prisons adopted the practice of solitary confinement, depriving a prisoner of visual stimulation and human contact. At the time, the idea was that a prisoner with some “alone time” would reflect on his or her misdeeds and come out a better person. It was quickly noticed, however, that instead of becoming a moral paragon, prisoners in solitary confinement began to exhibit symptoms of mental illness.

After this discovery, the practice was for the most part discontinued until the late-Twentieth Century, when US prisons began to transition from a rehabilitation model to one of retribution. Now we know that being alone hurts . . . a lot. And that’s why prisons do it. (There are in the US today something on the order of 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement at any given time.)

We people don’t like being alone for extended periods. It drives us crazy. Therefore, when we are alone, those of us not under arrest find ways to simulate human interaction—TV, social media, perhaps even writing a letter. We are social creatures. We need human interaction. We need an excuse to put our faces on.

Skip the Sermon

My father died recently, and my mother found herself alone after sixty-five years of companionship. She wonders aloud: should she give up and leave her face in the jar by the door? Is it disloyal of her not to do so? She no longer feels like Emily Dickinson’s independent little stone. She feels the full weight of dependency.

My prescription for my mother (and Eleanor Rigby) is . . . Go to church! Or bowling. Or a book club. Something. Father McKenzie’s message (or disconnected ramblings about a book) may not be much to text home about, but the coffee, wine, or potluck involved might just be the ticket.

A member of my congregation recently brought me one of those graphics called a bubble cloud, generated by a questionnaire concerning what was important to a Christian congregation near my humanist congregation. The most-used word? “Community.” And the congregation I serve would would have the same big bubble, “community.” In their case “Christ” and in our case “reason” would be tiny little bubbles compared with the true reason we gather as congregations, community.

Human interaction reminds us to pull our faces out of that jar.

Bowling with Father McKenzie

As the Beatles knew, denizens of post-industrial countries may exist in utter isolation. We often shop in anonymous supermarkets rather than bustling markets. We buy clothing off a hanger, not from the source of the craft. As Robert D. Putnam pointed out, many of us bowl alone.

I don’t think any of us has an “authentic” or “true” face. We adjust the faces we pull from the jar according to the circumstances of our interactions. We have a “going to a funeral” face. We have a “going to the theatre” face, and so on. These are constructed in the bustle of human relationships. Without the bustle, we don’t bother. And that’s not good for us.

Perhaps Eleanor—and all the lonely people—should share a selfie. Not a bad first step in getting that face out of the jar by the door and spiffed up a bit. Then? Go to church. Or temple or mosque or . . . a bowling team. Perhaps even chat with Father McKenzie. Who knows what he knows when he’s not pontificating . . .