The Circle Is Life
I’ve been watching the live feed of outer space images captured by the James Webb space telescope. Ethereal music plays in the background as fantastic pictures of color and light play across the screen in my living room.
Pink clouds, milky veils of bluish light splashed across a black canvas; explosions of colors and pin points of light that are entire galaxies that may not even exist any more, but whose images are just now reaching us. It’s mind-boggling to realize we’re literally looking back in time to see these images. It’s impossible not to be captivated, transfixed, awed. It’s impossible not to feel infinitesimal in the realization that there’s so much out there and here we are, bumbling along, worrying about things like cholesterol numbers, gas prices and Facebook likes. Clueless.
As my daughter and I watch these pictures, that are more like scenes painted by an incredibly gifted and inspired fantasy artist, it’s impossible not to notice all the circular patterns and rounded shapes. Shapes that echo the fragile encasement of a yolk within an egg, the gauzy underbelly of a jellyfish, the inner world of a mother’s womb. There are no straight lines in space, in nature, or in life. The seasonal cycles created by the revolutions of our own blue and green sphere reflect the circular nature of our own lives. Even the dying stars trailing dust in their wake make an arc across the sky in their final burst of light… and life. As I watch all these images from space, that’s the word that comes to my mind. Life.
Since we first landed on the moon—even before that—we’ve forever been obsessed with finding life in outer space; is there someone or something else out there? For me, these pictures confirm that there most definitely is life out there. It may not be life like humankind, or any sort of biological life we are able to recognize, but no one can argue that creation is not still in full swing. Whatever processes are underway, whatever is actually happening out there—or has already happened—is certainly a creative process unfolding.
In fact, so many of the images actually (ironically) look so much like life as we know it on a microscopic scale—swimming single cells with glowing nuclei, cells in process of dividing, cells strung together to comprise an organ, organ systems supporting functions of a larger whole. That’s what I see in these pictures sent from deep space—of planets circling a single blazing star, whole galaxies spanning the length of infinity. Life. Life on a such a grand scale, reflecting life on a comparatively insignificant scale. It’s beautiful and it’s perfect. And it’s perfectly beautiful.
