The Moons of Jupiter, and, well, Spiders

Or How to SEE the world

Last weekend, for the 4th of July holiday, I visited my friends from my new church. The 4th of July is actually the center of the “Holy Week” for this new, semi-atheist church. The Alpha and Omega Celebration is intended to help people cement their new view of life, relatively unencumbered by what they now see as an overly limiting world view imposed by their parents before they were able to think for themselves.

They don’t believe in, as the founder says, “a Big G god.” I feel like many of them (well, the group is quite tiny…so many is relative) have embraced reductionist atheism. But the “dogma,” or “scripture,” now limited to a document entitled “The Distinctions,” allows for belief in spirituality.

I volunteered to help the founder, Dan, in whatever way I can, based on my longtime study of the world’s (and history’s, and pre-history’s for that matter) religions. I may be ordained as the first “Curate,” as soon as we sort out the fact that I finally paid dues to join another church that I have attended for over 20 years, and don’t believe I should have to renounce one in order to join the other. However, I may soon care less, as the leadership of that church is refusing to have any formal soul searching about civil rights in this nation that is now hosting our spirits’ “vehicles.”

Anyway, the moons of Jupiter. Yes, so we had our Alpha and Omega celebration at Harper Lake last weekend. I actually got in the water and swam a bit. Then I got in a kayak and tried to kayak around a bit. My shoulders were ok, which was a surprise. Concern about the shoulders had kept me from believing I’d ever be able to get in a canoe or kayak again, even as I had fond memories of these activities in my youth. Sadly, I was not able to deal with the waves from the power boats sharing the lake, and it had been so long since I had used this skill set, I needed more room than usual to steer. After the second time that I found myself heading for or being headed at by a large vessel, I went back to shore. But it still felt like an independence.

Later, Dan got out the two telescopes he had bought for the occasion. Freedom from the religious ties that bind allows us to center ourselves in the cosmos revealed by science, and call it a religious practice. After the telescope purchase motivating non-event of the partial penumbral eclipse of the moon, we turned the scope to Jupiter. Finally, I saw it. A disk, not a point, and a series of pinpricks from 1 to 7 o’clock. I realized that those were the moons of Jupiter. WOW.

I say finally, because while the optics of the telescope were beyond any hopes I might have had, the features used to control the position and direction of tube were poor quality at best. Granted, it’s still a crime against humanity that they were so good for the supposed price of $60.00. That price and its implied consequences might have gone unnoticed in the past, but not now.

I feel so different to have seen the moons of Jupiter with my own eyes. And while the eclipse was a non-event, the detailed features of the moon were more amazing than any image I remember seeing. There are fine cracks in the surface, and super bright pinpricks that are reflections from I don’t know what.

My respect for those who had to make and aim their own telescopes 400 years ago has drastically increased. My personal thanks to the workers who made the one I used, allowing me a new window on the universe, before my cataracts deteriorate my visual processing further.

The full moon is a strong anchor of my first sighting of the Dead Sea, but the stronger anchor is the memory of the nuns sharing the beach the next morning, whose eyes I felt on my wet tee shirt. I had forgotten my bathing suit. The salt water made the wet tee shirt even more revealing than it would have been in fresh water.

The full moon will be a strong anchor of my first Alpha and Omega celebration, but the stronger anchor will be the moons of Jupiter. Of course, had I not known they were there, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Ten days later, I am still amazed by the optical quality of what was most likely a Chinese telescope. A $60 National Geographic branded window to a bigger world.

I am grateful for the Alpha and Omega experience of being positioned at the body of the spider, while my technologically enhanced senses reach out in all the directions that a spider’s legs do. We can see the world as a network of spiders with a new spider body at the point of every spider’s toe. Some of the legs reach back to more central spiders, until there’s no center, because everywhere is the center.