A truly stellar news conference

Vera C. Rubin Observatory and what it's looking at. (Source and description.)

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At Monday's unveiling of the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón in Chile, director Željko Ivezić promised, 

... At the end of presentation you will get the link [to this site/application] and then you can spend the rest of your day enjoying these ten million galaxies.

Ivezić made this promise as he presented stunning initial images from the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope and its world-record-sized digital camera. In the hour and a half news conference I linked above ("Monday's unveiling"), his wonderful presentation, given with both awe and humor, starts here. If you are a space or cosmology nerd or a fan of science journalism, you'll want to see all of the rest of this video, but if not, Scientific American has done you a great service by summarizing the presentation, and selecting several shorter videos, in their article, "Majestic First Images from Rubin Observatory Show Universe in More Detail Than Ever Before."

Most news headlines these days don't give us much joy, but I found this Rubin Observatory presentation and press conference, clunky as it was in places, very inspiring. Željko Ivezić's enthusiasm, and the heartfelt comments from the news conference panel (question-and-answer portion starts here), gave a wonderful human dimension to an otherwise tech-heavy theme and the staggering cosmic scale of the images themselves.

You might ask what distinguishes this earth-bound observatory from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes in space. Those amazing space tools can focus on very specific places, at distances that take us close to the apparent origins of our universe. The Rubin Observatory, on the other hand, will photograph the entire sky that's visible on its mountain, through full revolutions of the earth, over and over. These high-resolution images will be compiled over a ten-year period. Scientists and other viewers worldwide will be able to gain access to the images, including celestial movements and changes, and evidences of dark matter and dark energy. The compilation is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Here's how it compares to other astronomical survey projects and catalogs, but one of its main advantages is simply the combination of the unprecedented speed of its repeating image-capturing cycles, without losing high resolution.

Rubin in 1963 using Kitt Peak National
 Observatory's 36-inch telescope with
Kent Ford's image tube spectrograph
attached. (Source and description.)

Instead of spending the last two days just looking at ten million galaxies, I've enjoyed reading about Vera Rubin and some of her contemporary colleagues, such as Kent Ford, Geoffrey Burbridge, Margaret Burbridge ... and following up some of the numerous links on their Wikipedia pages.

In case you see politics in everything, as I tend to do, notice  that several of the initial speakers in the long video puffed the USA's role as the world leader in science. That made it all the more interesting to notice the incredible variety of immigrants, international participants, cultures, and languages involved in the Rubin Observatory program.

It's also interesting to note that the press conference press handler turned away a question about future funding in light of federal budget cuts. (One earlier projection estimated running costs of $40 million per year.)

Now, back to the images .... Or as Željko Ivezić says, "Warp One, engage!"

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A few more words about the Rubin Observatory: here are the project's four main science goals.

"Racist is a tough little word," wrote linguist John McWhorter in The Atlantic. "Many of us think its meaning is obvious, but it has evolved quite a bit from its original signification over the past several decades."

What would you say? What are useful current definitions of "racism," "systemic racism," and "racist," based on your own experience or on sources you trust and recommend? In a brief survey, I'd like to ask you five questions that may help me write a related blog post, but, if that happens, nobody's comments will be attributed without permission.

Citing COVID-19 restrictions dating to 2020, city authorities in Moscow are not allowing protests (not even single-person picketing) at the site of the restored Joseph Stalin sculpture at Metro station Taganskaya. It reminds me of the scandal that surrounded restoration of a quotation lauding Stalin in the rotunda of Kurskaya station back in 2009, a time when we often passed through that station. (You can see part of that quotation in my photo: "Stalin raised us to be faithful to the people, and he inspired us to work and to perform great deeds.") Back in 2009, protesting didn't seem to be all that risky.

An urgent question (and an offer of practical resources for local Friends meetings) from Wess Daniels: Who gave us Guilford College?

Joseph and his brothers: Tom Gates continues his series on Quakers and the end of scapegoating.

Micah Bales on the Gerasenes and their unhappy reaction to a healing. (Context: Luke 8:26-39.) And how would we react?

Our reading this morning leaves us with no doubt: Healing is hard. True healing disrupts as much as it restores. The transformation that Jesus brings ripples out from those who are being healed to touch the whole fabric of society. When we get healed, we’ll find ourselves in a new kind of trouble. Holy trouble. 

Nadya Tolokonnikova (of Pussy Riot fame) and her prison cell installation in a downtown Los Angeles gallery.

“One thing that I just don’t vibe with in modern American society – there’s an entire thing about safety. And I’ve lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,” she said. “This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”

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At least the second time I've ended with this clip: Gino Matteo and Jason Ricci ... "I need Jesus to walk with me."

Denominational shorts

Young E. Stanley Jones. Source.

Two weeks ago in my post, "The church is like a ...", I was recalling Craig Dykstra's description of the evolution of denominations in the USA. His ideas came back to me this week as I happened upon these words from E. Stanley Jones (The Christ of Every Road: A Study in Pentecost, 1930):

As long as religion was denominational-centric God could not trust us with power. Had he [sic] done so, it would have run into a denominational megalomania. Nor could he trust us with power so long as religion was bound up with Westernism and its supremacies. He he done that, it would have run into religious imperialism. But if religion is Christ-centric, if to be a Christian is to be Christlike, to catch his mind and Spirit, then I think God can back that with power to the utmost.

Denominations are becoming less important in their traditional roles of franchising agencies to open and close churches, supply personnel and services, outsource international outreach and disaster relief, publish curriculum, and exercise quality control over the denomination's brand. 

Of course, to the extent that denominational organizations are seen as worthy, reliable sources of inspiration and support for local congregations, and not as coercive gatekeepers, they'll continue to have a role. But that role should be held to the standard that is implied by E. Stanley Jones's "but if": Does our denomination serve as a genuine community of shared memory and experience of what it means to grow into Christ-likeness?

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I spent seventeen years of my life working in denominational structures. During those years, I saw how the old "denominational-centric" loyalties were weakening and political polarizations increasing. All this certainly made my life very interesting, entirely dependent as we were on our constituency's free-will gifts and a more or less consensus-based form of governance.

I also saw a more positive development -- a new, multi-generational movement of Quakers who freely cross lines to discuss urgent matters of faith and practice without fear of the old gatekeepers. It wasn't the first such movement among Friends; for example, the Young Friends and conscientious objectors' networks had similar influences in much of the 20th century.

Social media and blogs carry the current version of this movement across to wider circles of people -- including those who can't afford to subscribe to lots of Quaker and ecumenical periodicals or travel across countries and oceans to conferences, camps, and pilgrimages. Many of the Quaker blogs that have arisen over the last two decades are part of this movement. In the USA (perhaps beyond, as well), Martin Kelley has been in the forefront of promoting this increased virtual traffic among all flavors of Friends, including those who prioritize Christ-likeness over Quaker exceptionalism.

Over the last fifteen months, the pandemic has forced new patterns on most or all of us. Many local meetings and churches have had to confront situations of increased isolation for some faithful attenders, especially those who are not accustomed or inclined to participate electronically. At the same time, the Internet has allowed us also to become more widely accessible. Our Camas Friends Church has had visitors from scattered parts of the USA, and at least two from Russia. Some of our visitors at Camas Friends were unprogrammed Friends who had never attended a programmed, pastoral Quaker meeting. The online Russian-speaking meetings for worship over the past year, facilitated by Friends House Moscow, have included participants from many parts of Russia and at least six other countries. Our online memorial meeting for Misha Roshchin was, as far as we know, the very first Quaker memorial meeting conducted in the Russian language.

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Related posts:

The unbearable lightness of being Quaker

Yearly meetings: myth and reality

FUM retreat: what did we accomplish?

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My post "The church is like a ..." invited comments on my three proposed models of the church (incubator, laboratory, and observatory) and asked for other models and metaphors that you found helpful. On Facebook, several of you contributed. I've taken the liberty of boldfacing some of the key words: 

I probably think of the church (at least my own!) as part retreat center, part hospital, part trade school, part activist organization. Participants can be revitalized through the experience of self-transcendence and self-care (retreat). Wounds are addressed and care is given... often by the wounded!(hospital). Skills like love and listening and other “abilities” crucial to the Quaker way or “vocation” are learned through practice (school). Energy and resources are pooled and channeled toward needs in the community and world (activism). [Matt Boswell]

I love the earthiness of "trade school"! It stands in interesting contrast with Elton Trueblood's idea that every church should be a seminary. I sort of agree with Elton but "seminary" might sound a bit forbidding. Pope Francis has given new energy to the idea of church as hospital. Thanks for your ideas! [My reply to Matt]

I faced a similar challenge with "seminary" when I decided to attend and needed to explain it to my (largely unchurched) friends and family. Its Latin root is "seedbed" - a place to plant seeds and nurture what comes to life. It worked well then, and still does! [Greg Morgan, replying to Matt and me.]

I am quite happy with describing the church as a gathering of people who have felt themselves called out of the world into discipleship — people who have that called-out feeling in common. I don’t feel any need to make it sound like an imitation of science. It’s not, for me, as if science is the ultimate determiner of what all other things should be like. If a non-churchy group is puzzled by things like “called out of the world”, and “discipleship”, or puzzled about why people with that sort of feeling might want to congregate, I think those are good and helpful matters to talk about. [Marshall Massey]

Thanks, Johan - I like the idea of your "three word challenge" to define church using non-church language, and the way you build from there. I want to ruminate on this some more, but for now I'll go with church as a place I go for connection, inspiration, and encouragement. [Greg Morgan]

Sanctuary. [Adam Fazio]

Community ... [Penny Rutherford Sitler]

A school for experiential learning. [Marcelle Martin]

Hard to decide. [Jean-François Roussel]

I prefer hospital. [Jared A. Warner]

A Family. [Roger Dreisbach-Williams]

Thank you, Friends!

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Ira Rifkin has some advice for journalists covering the complex relationship between religion and politics in Israel.

State Duma member Valery Rashkin: a rebel in the Russian Communist Party.

This article on the possible poisoners of writer/critic/poet Dmitri Bykov raises (or rather reinforces) serious questions on murder as a deliberate government policy.

Does the new map of the universe's dark matter cast doubt on Einstein? Maybe not.

Benjamin Moser visits the city that was my home for three months in 2019: Hebron.

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I found out a couple of days ago that one of my favorite contemporary blues musicians, harpist James Harman, died last month. He gave me, and many others in many countries, countless hours of good musicianship and good-humored lyrics. I've posted many of his tracks on my blog over the years. It was hard to pick a favorite, but here's a delightful sample from a festival performance in Denmark:

Faith and trust in Capernaum

In the Gospel of Mark, at the beginning of the second chapter, there's the familiar New Testament story of the paralyzed man (Mark 2:1-12, The Message; NIV). Four men were carrying his stretcher, hoping to ask Jesus to heal him, but the house was so crowded that they couldn't get past the door. Instead, they made an opening in the roof and lowered the patient into the room. Verse 5: "When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.'"

Leonid Kishkovsky, protopresbyter within the Orthodox Church in America, rector at Our Lady of Kazan Church in Sea Cliff, NY, USA, and a respected ecumenist in the larger Christian world, gave this very brief sermon back on March 28, opening up an aspect of the story that I'd never really considered. If you have considered it, feel free to smile at my late awakening. [UPDATE: He also gave this sermon in English -- here it is. (Thank you, Sophia Kishkovsky.)]

In less than five minutes, he makes these important points:

• Jesus responds to the faith of those men by healing the patient and sending him home on his feet, carrying the stretcher on which he had been lowered through the roof.
• We don't know anything about the stretcher bearers except that they were men, and there were four of them. From the text, we can't say anything about their relationship to the patient. But it was their faith that decisively impressed Jesus.
• People have various understandings of the word "faith." Some emphasize faith in the doctrines and teachings of the church. Still others understand that faith is best expressed in fulfilling the commandments and statutes of the church.
• Not so many of us (he goes on) would connect "faith" with "trust" -- although in Russian, the word "faith" and the word "trust" have common linguistic roots. In other words, if we believe in God (have faith in God), we are demonstrating trust in God. [The phrasal verb "to believe in" comes from that same linguistic root.] This might be the simplest and most direct way of understanding faith.
• In this account, we also see another dimension of trust: the trust that the paralyzed patient shows, most obviously, to those carrying him. And, together, they trust that Jesus can save him.
• Let's orient our lives as Christians around trust -- that is, trust in God and trust in each other. Let's be friends to each other, so that we are each ready to entrust ourselves to each other. Amen.

To understand the importance of the patient's faith in his stretcher-bearers, all I have to do is to imagine myself in this scene, experiencing their scary improvisation, lowering me through the roof without tipping me off the stretcher.

For decades, one of my most urgent concerns as a Quaker has been the role of trust as the most basic Quaker testimony. Trust in God lies at the very foundation of our teachings on peace and nonviolence, equality, simplicity, and our method of church government -- centered (in all our flavors and branches) in the expectation that the whole community prays together to discern the will of God for each other.

In our own times, the centrality of trust in our lives as a community has never been a more important legacy for the Body of Christ as a whole. If we can, for the sake of discussion, set aside our mystical and metaphysical theologies about church and simply focus on its functional definition, is there any other social structure where we can meet together (despite all our secular differences) in utter vulnerability? Not only are we publicly saying that our faith/belief/trust is in God (which is no longer a reliable source of social approval!), but we are also meeting to carry each other, to risk for each other, to confess our weaknesses, tragedies, and addictions to each other, and relate our natural and supernatural experiences of God to each other.

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I have never been part of a Quaker meeting or church where trust was always experienced at an ideal level. But there's something significant I've noticed in our Camas Friends Church's meetings for worship by videoconference over this past year. We have, in fact, become bolder in sharing our vulnerabilities with each other. It's this experience, week after week, that tells me Kishkovsky's sermon is solid.

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Related posts:

What is our vocation?

The most important question.

Trustworthy, part one, part two, part three, part four.

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On the basis of Paul's list of women co-workers (Romans 16:1-16) and other factors, Beth Allison Barr doesn't believe in male headship. (Dear Quakers: if you're tempted to pass this by because "we don't have this problem," please think again! First of all, historically we have had this problem. Secondly, Baptists are our brothers and sisters in faith; on the wider stage, our exceptionalism ill becomes us.) Thanks to Jim Fussell for the link.

What is the muon G-2 experiment and why is it so important? (And why should we remain cautious and wait a while before abandoning the Standard Model?)

Chuck Fager shares fascinating biographical writings by David Zarembka, who died in Eldoret, Kenya, of COVID-19 on April 1. Gladys Kamonya, David's wife, had just died of this same disease on March 23.

April 8, 1865: General Ulysses S. Grant was having a hard night.

Becky Ankeny on living with actual hope.

Nancy Thomas is Just Asking: poems based on Ephesians.

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Kenny Neal, "The Things I Used to Do" and "Since I Met You Baby." Watch him hand the guitar off to Guitar Shorty at 9:30, then play the rest of the song on the harp.

Stepping out of the boat

Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends, May 18, 2018, opening session.

Immediately [after feeding the multitudes; context] Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.

But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

“Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to you on the water.”

“Come,” he said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

And when they climbed into the boat, the wind died down. Then those who were in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

When Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends opened its very first annual sessions as an established body, about two months ago in Canby, Oregon, USA, I was practically holding my breath with excitement and anticipation. During our opening worship, Matthew's account of Jesus, the disciples, and the water came to my mind. I quickly realized why: we were Peter, stepping out of the boat. Would we have the necessary faith?

The parallels with Matthew's gospel aren't perfect. We weren't simply on our way to the next stop; our boat was more like a lifeboat dropped from the shifting deck of Northwest Yearly Meeting. (Nautical metaphors might be a bit risky; some would say we were forced to walk the plank!) One thing we had in common with Peter: We had asked Jesus to command us, and he did.

Here we're among those receiving
certificates as recorded ministers.

Step one, conducting business as disciples who love each other: We were a completely new yearly meeting, a new association of Quakers, with only a few quarterly rehearsals under our belts, but I was impressed to see how well we worked together. Important decisions were discussed and approved. (You're invited to access minutes through this page.) We named committees and officers. We received a treasurer's report and approved a budget. We recognized ministers. We received visitors from other parts of the Quaker world.

It seemed to me that we took that first step without sinking. Much of the practical credit goes to clerk Cherice Bock, who led us with grace and patience and sensitivity.

Step two, building our identity: Here we really had to decide whether we as a body were in fact walking toward Jesus. Some of our churches are uncomplicatedly and unaffectedly Christian, culturally indistinguishable from other evangelical Friends congregations, except for the refusal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. None of our meetings identify as non-Christian, but some have more experience providing spiritual hospitality to people who have survived encounters with authoritarian religiosity. Those churches are particularly careful not to use Christian language in ways that could come across as glib and domineering. At our Canby sessions, this issue came up in considering what to require of applicants for membership. Rather than asking applicants to use specific language about themselves, we agreed to describe who we are -- a Christ-centered community -- and leave it up to applicants to decide whether this kind of community was something they wanted to join.

Once again, we grappled with a complex issue ... and did not sink.

We're not out of the water yet, so to speak. We have more decisions to make, including the adoption of a book of discipline. Beyond these important identity-and-boundary concerns ... and intimately related to them ... are the questions that all we Quakers are bound to ask ourselves at all times: what does God want to say and do through us? Given our legacy of Quaker discipleship, what will be the shape of our peace witness, our evangelism, our Lamb's War against racism and elitism, our care for God's creation? What wider associations of Friends might help us in being faithful to God's leadings?

Beyond what is required to protect children and vulnerable members and attenders, we do not claim top-down authority over individual churches, but we will be free to develop shared services and ministries. What might those be? Will we collaborate on Christian education for children? Will we consider joining wider associations of Friends?

Referring to William Barber's message to Friends General Conference (see next item below), we're living in a time where there's just a lot of meanness. There will certainly be temptations to look down at the water, to fear the wind, to fall back on the tired answers of the past. To be honest, I feel those temptations multiple times a day. I want to keep going step by step toward Jesus, knowing that even if I slip, I can still say, with Peter, "Lord, save me!"

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Six years later, Stepping out of the boat, part two.

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FGC plenary session with Rev. Barber

About a week ago, William Barber II, a minister from Goldsboro, NC, and founder of Repairers of the Breach, addressed the annual gathering of Friends General Conference. Basing his message on Ezekiel 22:23-31, Barber traced four enmeshed sins (meanness in politics; misuse of the courts; misdirection of the masses; and theological malpractice) from Ezekiel's time, through the era of Lucretia Mott and Levi Coffin, right up to today.

At 47:40 he says,

And we ended up in America with a president steeped in racism, narcissism, economic isolationism, and we ended up with a majority Congress so paid off by the corporate backers that they would sell their own children's future out to get a tax cut to the wealthy, guns to the NRA, freedom to the insurance companies, deregulation to the polluters, and the right to oppress workers to the corporations, and more money, more money, more money to the military defense contractors and the war economy. That's where we are, that's the analysis.

And here we are, at a time -- we are saying in the Poor People's Campaign -- where once again, like Dr. King said, we have to address systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy, and militarism, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism, if we're going to turn this country around. And you can't separate any one of those from the others.

Why do I say that? Because systemic racism, systemic poverty, ecological devastation, the war economy, and militarism, and the false moral narrative of Christian nationalism, has created a kind of meanness in politics, like in Ezekiel's day, like in Lucretia Mott's. There's a meanness in politics, a meanness we haven't seen as overt for a long time.

Early on, Barber refers to Ezekiel's indictment of false prophets. Toward the end, he returns to this theme: "...What we see now is a boldness of the false prophets, this kind of covering up and being puppets to the Empire rather than being prophets to the Empire." His call to Quakers: be still and quiet long enough to know we're called by God and not by ego and arrogance, and then speak out, act out, as true prophets -- as the moral witness of our time. (I recommend not skipping anything, but to hear his charge to Friends, go to 1:03:09.)

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Timing is everything, it seems. Pension reform in Russia. (And related longevity charts.)

Shaun Walker wonders whether the World Cup will change how Russia is covered by foreign press.

Frederica Mathewes-Green's tattoo and related thoughts on faith, visible and persistent.

Sarah Kaplan on ghostly neutrinos from a distant galaxy.

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Sister Rosetta Tharpe with Walter Horton

"You call me and I'll go"

Source.  

About an hour ago, as I write these words, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) arrived in Cuba. Tomorrow he's scheduled to meet with the bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, in a room at José Martí International Airport. Kirill and Francis are expected to spend a substantial part of their time in private and unscripted talks centering, at least initially, around the difficult situation of Christians of all confessions in the greater Middle East.

The spark for this meeting may have come from Francis, who told reporters back in November 2014 that he had promised Kirill, "I'll go wherever you want. You call me and I'll go." When they and their staffs realized that Kirill's plans to visit South America and Francis's plans to visit Mexico meant that their paths could cross in Havana, a plan emerged ... although exactly when it emerged (revealed only a week ago) isn't clear.

What is clear: this is a historic meeting. The Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) is the largest section of the global Eastern Orthodox family, and its head has never even once met with the head of the Roman Catholic Church in all the centuries their constituencies have been on this planet together. Instead, Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches, often allied with secular rulers, have poached from each other's flocks and properties over the centuries. Any number of historians from each side can tell you exactly why the other side is the main culprit. And the current conflicts in Ukraine have added to these grievances.

Do we Quakers have a stake in this meeting? After all, aren't we supposed to be a radical departure from the male-dominated, authoritarian, ceremonial cultures that the Catholic and Orthodox both seem to represent? (Are any of us ever likely to get the kind of reception from the President of Cuba that Kirill received today?) Why should we care?

• First of all, we've been asked to care. As fellow believers, we've been asked by both Francis and Kirill to pray "fervently" for the success of these meetings. Maybe that should be enough right there.
• Second, many of our neighbors are in these men's pastoral care. Even for those of us outside their jurisdiction, that ought to give some weight to their meeting tomorrow, and to their request for our prayer. A successful meeting could be a direct blessing to many millions of members of the body of Christ, including countless thousands who are trying to carry their cross in areas of crisis where we Friends are few and far between.
• Finally, whatever we think of the advantages and defects of their organizations, these men are in positions of leadership and influence. Caution and rigidity can be found in the middle management of both hierarchies. However we feel about the power and influence they wield or ought to wield, Francis and Kirill are just men, and are just as much in need of Holy Spirit guidance as any of us. Let's pray that the freedom that Francis had in saying "you call me and I'll go" will still be in the air as they meet.
• Friday addition: I affirm Friends' distinctives in upholding a low-overhead vision of church, but we are not without our own myths about ourselves! 

Some Kirill-Francis-Havana links:

Russian sources.
A Ukrainian Catholic take.
National Catholic Reporter.
America: The National Catholic Review.
Cardinal Koch (Vatican Radio).
The cynics' version.

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Nazi oppression and the cruelties of world war created some miraculous meetings of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant disciples at the grassroots. In his talk, "Beyond Fear: The Therapeutic Role of Saints," Jim Forest reminds us of two examples: Mother Maria Skobtsova ("the one Orthodox saint of modern times who is on the calendar of the Catholic Church in France") and the White Rose resistance group in Germany.

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Source.  

Today's other big news: an interdisciplinary (and likely interconfessional as well!) team known as the LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced that their equipment apparently detected the gravitational waves that Albert Einstein predicted but doubted would ever be found. If verified, LIGO methods will open up incredible new possibilities for astronomy and cosmology, helping us to investigate space-time beyond current limitations of visibility, distance, and even primordial time.

The Internet is happily swamped with reports of today's announcement, accompanied by many creative attempts to explain things to nonscientists like me. Here is one from space.com. I'd love to think that humanity would take a moment to share these scientists' delight and put our earthly squabbles into perspective.

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Seems well-timed in light of LIGO: George Fox Evangelical Seminary is organizing a seminar in the planetarium at Portland, Oregon's outstanding science museum, OMSI, on February 19: "In Love with God's Two Books: Coming to Faith and Wonder through Scripture and Science." (Thanks to Paul Almquist for the link.)

"Creation waits with eager longing..." Epistle of the 2016 World Plenary of the Friends World Committee for Consultation.

Quaker Voluntary Service invites applicants to serve in the 2017-2017 program year.

Ian Paul: Can the Church of England 'agree to disagree' on sexuality without becoming theologically incoherent?

Another grim week for the civil-society sector in Russia: Internet defenders. Agora. Golos. (Golos background.)

My first contributions to Atlas Obscura: Gennett Walk of Fame. Levi Coffin House.

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Even if you're a pope or a patriarch ... when the Lord gets ready, you've got to move.

Perspective

How we greet spring.... Our institute on the eve of the equinox.

When the waves of change, instability, and uncertainty threaten to overwhelm me, that's when it is good to recover some perspective.

Our Moscow Friends Meeting has not been immune from all the swirls of assertion, counter-assertion, and sheer emotion connected with events in Ukraine and Crimea. Among us are some who are dubious about the new leadership in Kiev and support the takeover of Crimea, and some with the opposite views. But in the quiet and light of meeting for worship for business, on the eve of the Crimean referendum, we are able to re-anchor ourselves with this minute of essential unity:

Московские Друзья продолжают держать в Свете ситуацию на Украине и молятся о мире, преодолении взаимного непонимания, недоверия и вражды между отдельными группами людей.

Мы чувствуем поддержку мировой семьи Друзей, получая письма поддержки от разных собраний.

Moscow Friends continue to hold the situation in Ukraine in the Light, and pray for peace that overcomes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility between different groups of people.

We feel the support of the global family of Friends as we receive letters of support from a variety of Friends meetings.

And it's true, we feel uplifted by the many communications we've received from Quaker meetings, churches, and individuals who include us in their loving concern for peace. Perspective changes when your priority is love.

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Here in Elektrostal, we've often been asked by our friends, colleagues, students--"What do you think of the situation in Ukraine?" As I said last week, our priority is not to give our opinions but to listen to theirs. After the Crimean referendum and U.S. president Obama's announcement of sanctions, some of the questions became a little more pointed. One of the cleaning staff at the Institute asked me this evening, "Is it really necessary to be so insulting to us? You know yourself that we're decent, normal people."

Just before the referendum, U.S. senator McCain said, "Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country." Of course the stupidity of such a comment rather neutralizes its offensiveness, but we have to live in the backwash. To restore a bit of perspective and provide some evidence that not all Americans interpret things quite as he does, we brought this Wonkette post to our evening class. This kind of sharp sarcasm isn't my preferred style of political commentary--it has a violence of its own--but I was actually rather relieved to show our friends that the biting humor of Russian political discourse on the Internet does have its American equivalents. Too often we Americans are portrayed here as pleasant idiots, and right now, not all that pleasant.

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In all the breathless news coverage of Ukraine, Crimea, and Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, there was one major story that was an extraordinary contribution to restoring perspective. As Tuesday's New York Times headlined it in a front-page story right in between Malaysian 370 and Crimea: "Space Ripples Reveal Big Bang's Smoking Gun."

The headline states the case with more certainty than scientists themselves might use, but even the strong possibility of this breakthrough is exciting. We may have a major hint into the nature of creation itself, particularly that first instant when the universe violently "inflated" at a speed faster than light, leaving gravitational traces that we can detect even now, 13.8 billion years after they left their imprint on the cosmic microwave background.

The summary report (pdf) of the BICEP2 observations and calculations, incomprehensible to me in its mathematical details, still gives off an intuitive sizzle. The press conference announcing the findings (link here in right sidebar, mp4 file here) is riveting, full of helpful graphics for nonspecialists. And here, thanks to openculture.com, is a wonderful video showing the human dimension of these findings. We watch Russian-American physicist Andrei Linde reacting to the news of possible confirmation of his ideas on creation: "Let us hope it is not a trick. ... What if I believe into this just because it is beautiful?"

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"Ukraine's Struggle: Where Heaven and Earth Have Met."

Meanwhile, as we try to cope with information wars all around us, "Russia Today's YouTube Glitch" and how it was interpreted, and "The Pros and Cons of Propaganda." (I include links for discussion, not as endorsement.)

Brian McLaren on U.S. National Public Radio, "What's Being Done to Palestinians Is Wrong," along with a brief (and not entirely sympathetic) introduction to dispensationalism in the comments section.

More perspective:  "Endless Grace: a Story of Forgiveness."

And more perspective: "Preparing for Canonization."

Are you running Windows XP? As support ends on April 8, here's an alternative. Carpe penguin!

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Ten years ago, my cousin Johan Fredrik Heyerdahl and I went to a club in Birmingham, UK, to hear a teenage blues guitarist named Joanne Shaw Taylor. I'm so glad to see that she's doing well--very well, judging by the evidence: