HomeAstronomers have identified a star in our galaxy that appears to be on a path
to lead it out of the galaxy in about 80 million years.
Here is a star that has been part of our galactic community for probably
billions of years, and yet its trajectory will take it away into the vast
reaches of intergalactic space where it will drift alone.
As gigantic as a galaxy is, the stars in a galaxy interact with one another;
they interrelate through gravity. Like other stars, we are in orbit around the
center core of the Milky Way. That is, we are clustered with billions and
billions of other stars and we swirl through space with them as our galaxy
itself drifts along.
Imagine, if you will, that the Earth orbited that star, or that our star (the
Sun) was on course to leave the galaxy in eighty million years. We then would
have a decision to make. Do we stay with our star as it leaves the galactic
community, or do we abandon our star and seek a new world another sun?
In thinking about the future of our species-or those species into which we
evolve-or even those other life forms on our planet that might evolve into
intelligent beings that take our place-would we wish to stay in a galaxy that
they might come to explore and colonize or would we choose to leave, caging them
in to one star system, planet, one very finite area of resources.
There is another, longer term, level of question. To try to find another
suitable planet might be a fruitless search. On the other hand our own star is
expected to go through processes that will destroy the earth in about five
billion years. That is a long time, but do we owe anything to those of our
descendants who might exist then? Would we owe it to them to try now to find a
planet that would allow those who follow us to live on beyond the expected death
of the earth? Would we owe it to ourselves to know that we had given them that
chance?
And behind all of this lies yet another question. If there is other life in
this galaxy, almost a certainty, and if at least some of that life is
intelligent, do we want our descendants to be able it be part of that galactic
community, or is the loneliness and isolation of deep space better?
I want to think a little bit about the message of the stars, the message of
galaxies, that is, the meaning for us of the existence of these things.
The process of development that the universe went through as propounded by
many is now believed to be one where at some point a single star was created in
the midst of the cosmic dust. That star collapsed upon itself, and then
exploded. The pressure of that explosion caused the dust around it to compress
rapidly, creating other stars, stars ultimately of different sizes and colors.
As those stars continued that process of creative destruction, of death and
birth, individual stars began to gather into clusters. They began to swirl
around one another-at great distance, but still in relationship to one another.
Those clusters of stars also began to inter-relate, began to swirl around one
another; soon they began to merge and circle around a common center, and that
was the creation of galaxies. Galaxies come in different forms as well:
globules, barred or spirals.
And galaxies themselves like to stay together. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is
part of the local group-about two dozen galaxies that stay near one another.
What does "near one another" mean when one is speaking of such
distances? Two dozen galaxies, each with billions of stars, and yet each
connected, however tenuously to one another. But there is still more. Local
groups like ours are part of clusters of local groups-we are in the Virgo
cluster-and clusters of galaxies gather in superclusters. These stretch across
hundreds of millions of light years in space. And yet, something keeps them
connected; something keeps them in communication with, in communion with, in
community with one another.
Somehow out of the dust of space something creates layer upon layer of
inter-relationship; it creates communities of stars and of galaxies and of
clusters of galaxies.
There are individual stars, stars that go their own way, stars that leave
community or exist apart from it. But the natural state for most is to somehow
be together, to somehow be in relationship with one another and through that to
relate beyond themselves and their individual connections to the wholeness, to
the oneness of all that is.
That inherent drive for connection, for inter-relationship that draws
together stars across unfathomable distances, that very same drive for
connection lives in many of the creatures of this planet. Our very molecules
were formed in the stars; they call to us. Whether instilled in us by evolution
or infused into our being by a creative divinity, or both, the desire for
community is within us. Small insects in swirling swarms that move across a
lake; fish that school together in the ocean; bees that may look for nectar
separately, but that return to the hive: each of these displays a form of that
drive for connection, that pull of gravity towards one another.
The fact that individual cells came together over time, to act together, to
become something greater than a group of individuals, to become a new life form,
a multicellular life form is part of that same drive, that same call to be with,
to connect, to relate. I exist as a single entity, and you exist as an entity,
because of that relational pull. Inter-relating, and interacting is part of our
substance; it is part of our minds, of our hearts, of our bones; it is part of
the deep core within us.
When astronomers look at a galaxy they do not say, there is a star and there
is a star and there is a star, they say, there is a galaxy. When any of us looks
at a person we do not say there is a cell and there is a cell and there is a
cell, we say, there is a person. In community, the group becomes something other
than a collection of individuals. Just as when we gather together in nations we
are something more than a group of individuals. Whether congregation or
corporation or country, a collective becomes its own entity, its own being. I am
not merely a collection of individual cells; that would just be a strange pile
of organic material in the corner. I am a relationship between cells.
Human beings are meant to be in community. We do not give up our individual
being, our individual identity, but we do help to create something different
from ourselves alone, something other than a mere collection of people. Whether
we are in a religious congregation or are part of a nation or are part of the
global community of nations, the whole is something greater than the sum of its
parts. That does not deny individuality. Our Unitarian Universalist tradition is
one of those that celebrates the individual search for truth in religion; but we
do so in community.
There are lessons here, and questions. Can we create a nation in which all
are part of us. Can we create a nation in which no person, no senior in a
nursing home, no infant in its parents arms will ever again die of hunger or
dehydration? Can we be a nation in which the poverty or illness of our neighbor
is our problem, where their suffering is our suffering and where we together act
to end that suffering?
What shall I do, what shall we collectively do, we the people, we the nation.
And can we be a world in which hunger and illness end because we grow to know
that they are us?
Can we be a nation that is not one nation alone, but that sees itself as part
of the broader community of nations and of humankind? Or will we choose instead
to be an errant star, intent on our own path, and indifferent to others?
The universe is immense. We human beings are part of that immensity; we are
created from it and shaped by it. In our day-to-day lives we do not always see
that, or if we see it we too often do not recognize the fullness of what it
means.
Perhaps, like individual stars, the natural state for most of us is to
somehow be together, to somehow be in relationship with one another and through
that to relate beyond ourselves and our individual connections to the wholeness,
to the oneness of all that is not only here on earth, but throughout the Cosmos.
Our sun, our planet, ourselves; perhaps as we dance along the Milky Way we can feel ourselves dancing with the stars, with the galaxies, and with whatever force or power placed us here, gave us life, and calls us to be together.
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