The Sun, in an age of coronavirus

Recently I was asked by a friend to comment on a poem that had come to him in an email; it was to do with the COVID- 19 epidemic, and my reply was to the effect that I thought that the writer, "a man of the cloth," as we say, could have worked a lot harder at his poem.

The first thing that struck me about it, was, that it was too long, and platituutionis (in the juxtapositioning of ideas), and devoid of emotion; and, among other things, I asked, where was the grief, the pain, the anguish, the despair, the "crucified Christ," and pointedly, where are the children? And for good measure, (for I was feeling a bit angry at this point), I threw in the plight of refugees, most of whom are living in camps, in squalour, and in a seemingly endless state of "lockdown." And after such a downer, I had to offer an upper: that the inclusion of these deeply personal responses to COVID -19, would have brought the poem to life, and the moreso, when set against the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

Now whatever flaws I might have found in the poem, I can't say the same about the sun, though I can admit to the truth, that for much of my adult life I have taken it for granted; and why not, for not only has it always been there, but, as we know, the sun is present even in its absence, and most important of all, although separate form the earth, the sun is integral to it: it is the provider and sustainer of life, no light, no life, and thankfully, given our capacity, as humans, to mess things up, it is beyond the reach and influence of man,  In fact, it is everything that we are not; not only is it self-sufficient, but it is there for our benefit.

Now if we are dependent on the sun for our very existence, of necessity the earth has to cooperate, or if you prefer, work in a way that allows all of us to share in its life giving properties, hence, with each evolving day, we pass from darkness into light; but of course it is more profound than that, for it is the changing tilt in  the earth, in its year long journey around the sun, that gives us the seasons of the year, thereby allowing all of us, (more or less equally), to share in the richness of what the sun has to offer. Hardly surprising then, that from the earliest of times, and in mythology, the sun has been both an object of wonder and a deity.

Now when it comes to the sun, there is a sense in which data seems superfluous, for it is in its sheer brilliance that the sun speaks to us, but in defence of data, here are a few additional details that literally! go a long way, and put not just us, but the sun in perspective. While we, so to speak, tip-toe around it, the sun, (that is 109 times bigger than the earth), and our entire solar system, makes its way around the inner edge of the Milky Way, along the spiral arm, Orion Cygmus; a journey that takes 230 million years to complete. And if we ask the question, What lies beyond the Milky Way? space science holds out the possibility that there might be as many as one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. But as we are in danger here of serious overload, let me return to planet earth, and a personal perspective.

For me the sun is a miracle, a daily recurring and stunning manifestation of the reality of God, that, for all the physical and technical reasons listed above, flies in the face of the notion that planet earth, and all that has been accomplished in it, is simply a product of chance, (a random and evolutionary coming together of various substances) that,  somehow resulted in us. It is an idea as unconvincing as the notion that the car parked outside our house, just happened; or than the neolithic monuments at Newgrange, in Ireland, at Stonehenge here in England, or elsewhere, likewise, just happened. 

So why am I telling you this? 

Well, it's all the fault of COVID-19, that has myself and Amber, (of necessity), out walking at the crack of dawn; and in the eight weeks that we have been doing so, we have witnessed some spectacular sunrises, an experience that has taken me back to a particular moment in my teenage years.

Standing at the water's edge on what was a drab seafront, I found myself reflecting on the complex nature of the world into which I was born: a world of serious political and religious division, and what particularly caught  my focus at that moment, was the sun, high in the sky, in all its splendour, and presiding over the world in all its diversity. India, about which I knew almost nothing, had come to mind, and the sun, at that moment, was a visible and tangible manifestation of the Divine. And profound though that moment was, I knew nothing of what the psalmist had to say of the sun, or of how effectively he had written of the transition from darkness into light:

"You made the moon to mark the months;

the sun knows the time for its setting.

When you spread the darkness it is night

and all the beasts of the forest creep forth.

The young lions roar for their prey

and ask their food from God.

At the rising of the sun they steal away

and go to rest in their dens.

Man goes forth to his work,

to labour till evening falls.

Nor could I have known as I stood on that drab shoreline, that one day I would have the pleasure of reading a remarkable book, not yet in the making, but to be written by the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who had spent forty years reporting from Africa. And everything about his experience is captured in the title. The Shadow Of The Sun: My African Life. In it he documents the lives of all the political figures, and political regimes of Africa, some good and some bad,  who occupied the world stage in my lifetime. But altogether more interesting are his insights that he gives into the cultural histories and traditions of the people of Africa, pre and post their colonial eras. And though the book was first published in 1998, I suspect, that since that date little, in Africa as a whole, has changed. He died in 2007. 

Now as I have laid claim to the sun for God, here is a passage from Ryszard: he is in the bus station in Accra and waiting, (a very significant concept in Africa), for a bus to Kumasi. Having described in vivid detail the bus station, as resembling a hugue circus that has just rolled in to town, he goes on to interpret what it is that he is seeing:

"The spiritual world of the "African" (if one may use the term despite its gross simplification) is rich and complex, and his inner life is permeated by a profound religiosity. He believes in the coexistence of three different yet related worlds.

   The first is the one that surrounds us, the palpable and visible reality composed of living people, animals, and plants, as well as inanimate objects: stones, water, air. The second is the world of the ancestors, those who died before us, but who died, as it were, not completely, not finally, not absolutely. Indeed, in a metaphysical sense they continue to exist, and are even capable of participating in our life, of influencing it, shaping it. That is why maintaining good relations with one's ancestors is a precondition of a successful life, and sometimes even of life itself. The third world is the rich kingdom of the spirits - spirits that exist independently, yet at the same time are present in every being, in every object, in everything and everywhere.

   At the head of these three worlds stands the Supreme Being, God. Many of the bus inscriptions speak of omnipotence and his unknown omnipotence: "God is everywhere," God knows what he does," "God is mystery." There are also some more down-to-earth, human injunctions: "Smile," "Tell me that I'm beautiful," and lastly, "Those who bicker like each other."

So what then of the sun; will it rise tomorrow and continue to do what it has been doing for the past 4,543 million years, (the age of the earth) ? Short of divine intervention, the answer has to be - yes!

__________

      © Cormac E. McCloskey

      "a man of the cloth" - a priest.
      Psalm. 104/105
      The Shadow Of The Sim
       Ryszard Kapusdinski
       Allen Lane: The Penguin Press

       The spiritual and corporal works of mercy - here