A Responsibility to Awe - Rebecca Elson

Rebecca Elson died in 1999, at the age of 39. She was an astronomer, physicist and poet. I came across her name and her work in Robert Crawford,(ed.), Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science (Oxford: OUP, 2006), a volume of essays and poems with responses from scientists. The book sets up a conversation between two apparently very different disciplines and discourses - with surprising and fruitful results. Elson's research was into dark matter, and the relationship between the quantity of dark matter, the amount of gravity it represents and therefore the rate and nature of the universe's expansion. Here is one of her poems, characterised by a remarkably reflective hopefulness, and a willingness to handle the biggest questions in two interrelated forms of human discourse and knowledge.

Let there Always be Light (Searching for Dark Matter)

For this we go out dark nights, searching
For the dimmest stars,
For signs of unseen things:

To weigh us down.
To stop the universe
From rushing on and on
Into its own beyond
Till it exhausts itself and lies down cold,
Its last star going out.

Whatever they turn out to be,
Let there be swarms of them,
Enough for immortality,
Always a star where we can warm ourselves.

Let there be enough to bring it back
From its own edges,
To bring us all so close we ignite
The bright spark of resurrection.

The essay in which this was quoted, 'Astronomy and Poetry', was written by Jocelyn Bell Purnell who discovered pulsars in 1967. It is the best in the book, at least the one I enjoyed most. But all the essays are attempts to share in a process of mutual appreciation, 'the mystery and challenge of science and the sense of music and ideas in poetry'. My current interest in theology and poetry is taking me into unfamiliar terrain, pushing me out of that comfort zone we call our subject field! The poems of Rebecca Elson represent one of the rewards of taking that risk. Her poetry and extracts from her notebooks are published by Carcanet, A Responsibility to Awe.Could just as easily be the title of a book on worship, don't you think?

Comments

[Mark Steinhardt]

Two typos. Please check the original of the poem. However, good to see this fine poem spread around. No, awe and worship are not even vaguely similar. Awe is an extreme of amazement, of wonder, not reverence or adoration or of appeal. Mark S

[Jim Gordon]

Thanks Mark, well spotted and duly corrected, and thank you too for taking time to respond. I'm not sure I would eliminate awe from worship - my closing comment on the post had in mind such encounters as Exodus 3, Psalm 8, the epiphany at the end of Job, the Transfiguration, Revelation 1 and the many other occasions in the Judaeo-Christian tradition where an extreme amazement of wonder precisely leads to worship, and in some cases prostration in adoration. A long line of biblical interpretation understands such encounters as Moses, Job, Isaiah, disciples in the Gospels and John in the Apocalypse, responding to those encounters at the deepest levels of human being. The great Jewish Rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel defined faith as what we do with radical amazement.