A Review

At one point in telling a very forgettable story to someone who's known me a little while but not that long, I said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but wonder is my default disposition to the world.” He laughed and said something along the lines of yeah, he’d noticed.

When I solicited topics for rebooting this blog from a bunch of interesting friends who know me from different parts of my life, nearly all suggested some version of Why Things Are Awesome – why space is great, why I get so geeked up about X, where I see God (sneak preview: everywhere), why I get so excited about photography/photographers/the new Star Wars/nature/adventures/saints.

I like that un-ironic enthusiasm about Creation is something people associate with me. It’s the reason for the name I gave this blog when I started it while I was student teaching in 2007. I thought I’d (re)start there.

Imagine holding a 1mm x 1mm square out at arm’s length (probably with tweezers, because that is teeny) over a patch of sky (an itty bitty patch of sky). A bunch of scientists who paid a lot of money for their turn with the Hubble telescope decided to use their rare and precious opportunity to take a picture of one such teeny patch of sky, thought to be black and empty. They basically did a long exposure, just to see what might be out there.

This is the image they captured.

Those are stars and whole galaxies in what we once thought of as empty, black, nothing. Hundreds of entire freaking galaxies in a blank space of space.

This is my computer background (because how could it possibly not be? Why isn't it yours?). A friend asked about it and after I explained she said, “And isn’t that just like people, too? We see each other and think, ‘I get you. There’s nothing more there.’ But then this.”

Which is more or less why I get so geeked up about stuff and people.

Yours in vastness,
A.