Waiting for the year 7541
It was my grandfather who taught me that a good sermon has to have three parts. So, this is part one.
Three years ago, a few days after Christmas, I was sitting in the basement of my parents’ house in Germany and listened to a podcast of a very religious person somewhere in America. This person claimed that I am kind of the anti-christ because I said something about the Christmas star. It was a bit of a shock. The various attempts of finding an astronomical phenomenon that could be the Star of Bethlehem have long been one of my favourite topics. More precisely, the futility of these attempts has been one of my favourite topics since I was a teenager. Just before Christmas 2017 I was asked to write something for our university’s press office about the star that inspired the three kings to come to Bethlehem. I was trying to convince people to take the comet-shaped star down and replace it with a bunch of planets. The whole thing was definitely more on the silly side. But clearly, even a half-serious attempt to try to explain a religious miracle with a scientific phenomenon will get me a straight ride to hell. There is really no excuse.
“Maybe this is one of these questions that is not supposed to be answered”, ended the article I wrote in 2017. And that’s another lesson I learned from my grandfather: You can totally do both, figure out if there was a miraculously bright star at the right time and place, and simultaneously acknowledge that there doesn’t need to be. Science is not in the business of answering that particular question. It’s not an attempt to erase the mystery, to deny the miracle. It is a way to add colour and flavour and context to the world. It is one more way of looking at the world, or at God’s creation, if you are religious. It happens to be my favourite way of looking at the world. But it doesn’t take away all the other options. And even if the Star of Bethlehem was a planetary conjunction, so what. Simmer down! It can still be a miracle.
Now this year we are actually going to have a Christmas star, pretty much like the collection of planets I wanted people to put on their Christmas trees. On the evening of December 21st, Jupiter and Saturn are going to be very close together, so close, that you could mistake them for one massively bright star. It is a rare planetary conjunction, a huge cosmic coincidence, when Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn are lined up, so that when viewed from Earth, the two others are almost on top of each other. Saturn and Jupiter haven’t been so close since the 17th century. They won’t be that close until 2080. In the year 7BC, Saturn met Jupiter three times, a triple conjunction, an event we won’t see until the year 2239.
I’m also looking forward to the triple conjunction in 7541, which will include multiple occultations of Saturn by Jupiter, for the first time since 6856BC. All these are astronomical lifetime events, in contrast to lunar or even solar eclipses which happen all the time. You only get one chance. We can look at them knowing for sure that we are seeing something rare, something special. Completely irrelevant, but special. We can put meaning into these events, like in anything else, or we can just enjoy the show. The show is in this case a particularly bright celestial object, but nothing seriously dramatic. No alien spaceship either. It’s an understated sensation. In Britain, the Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter is going to happen low above the western horizon, early in the night. Chances are it will be cloudy.
My grandfather would have been 106 years old when that super conjunction happens. Instead, he died eight years earlier. He went for lunch, his head sank to the table, and he was dead. No illness, no warnings. Almost hundred years old. What a lucky guy. Two weeks after Germany invaded Poland, in September 1939, he got shot through the face. The bullet made a small hole in one cheek, but turned sideways inside the mouth and left a gaping hole on the other side. He found out after being captured by Polish troops, when he tried to drink milk. The milk went in through the mouth and out through his cheek, tainted red, mixed with some shattered teeth. A photograph from the military hospital shows him with half his head in bandages.
The rest of his life my grandfather could not eat meat unless he turned it into pulp on his plate. He had a specific tool for that, a part of the silverware on our family dinner table. The spring that powered his meat scissors were a constant source of entertainment for us kids. When the other adults weren’t looking, grandfather took the spring out and let it bounce erratically over the table, if possible, into the dessert. It was great fun. The scar in his cheek gave his voice a characteristic sound, a subtle slur, and his face a characteristic authority. I only know the scar as one of many creases on his face.
He really liked to tell the story how he got shot in the war, over and over again. It’s not such a horrible story. The Polish soldier could have easily aimed a little higher. And the war could have easily lasted much longer for my grandfather. Why did he not get killed right away? Why not a bit later? Because he was looked after by God, that was his answer. Not sure what that says about my other grandfather, also a priest, who died as a prisoner of war in Siberia. One got shot and was lucky. We don’t know why. We have figured out what rules govern the miracle of the great planetary conjunctions, but the rules of life and death are elusive. One of these questions that are not supposed to be answered.
My grandfather was the person to introduce me to astronomy. Also the person to introduce my brother to fossils. He gave me my first little telescope, the thing that showed me craters on the moon, rings around Saturn, and clouds on Jupiter for the first time. My Galileian moments. He was happy to talk about science with me, endlessly. My parents were there to support all that nonsense, but my grandfather planted the seed. It was also one of the last topics we could endlessly discuss when he got old. Eventually, his mind narrowed from all of eternity to some parts of the Milky Way. I’m grateful he retained a couple of links to my world, the night sky, the birds in the garden, some random questions on religion and philosophy and science. The mind behind the Universe, and how we can explore it with our telescopes. Some parts of it, at least, the parts that emit or reflect or absorb light.
This winter the mind behind the Universe has planned a geometric double-header. The night of the miraculous alignment of Jupiter and Saturn happens to be the longest night of the year, the winter solstice. I never paid much attention to the solstices. In continental Europe, it is a non-event. They kind of happen, every year, no matter what, and you don’t really notice it, except for a note in the liveticker for esoteric nonsense, a bit like the annual meeting of the Bilderbergs. It is the most boring, repetitive, predictable astronomical spectacle out there. But after moving to Scotland, those dates have become seriously important. Something is definitely changing. The 21st of June is the day when the summer starts to feel a bit sour, like the second half of a bottle of milk that has been sitting in the fridge for too long. The day when we are reminded that the times with seemingly endless days are really not going to last forever. Time marches on. The autumn storms are coming. The path down to the sea is going to be muddy again, soon.
The 21st of December on the other hand is a day of hope, marked, this year, accidentally, by a Great Planetary Conjunction, for all to see (assuming the sky is clear). Although the winter has just begun, the days are getting longer again. The Earth’s axis has reached its maximum tilt away from the Sun. From now on, every day, we are adding four minutes of bright time, even though bright at this time of the year really means gloomy. From here on until June, every day is going to be better than the previous one. At least it’s going to be longer, that much is clear. More sunshine, more time spent outside, more vitamin D, fewer respiratory illnesses (with apologies to people with hayfever). It is the day our destiny turns around, the day when we can see an escape route. Time marches on. Earth, too.
The 21st of December is the perfect dark night for the end of this year. A day of cosmic coincidences. A geometric alignment that is rare, but completely meaningless unless you decide it’s not. And the moment the astronomical year turns around. As I am sitting at home, I will try to imagine being on a spherical spaceship named Earth, tilted away from the Sun as far as we possibly can, while forming an imaginary line with two other, much larger spaceships far out in the solar system. What a bizarre moment to be aware of. It’s not that the meaning, whatever you think it is, derives from the astronomical realities. It’s first the meaning, then the astronomy as a way to underline it.
It’s true, a good sermon has to have three parts. But you don’t have to tell everyone where the parts begin and where they end. You can even leave out the third part and hope that nobody will notice. If your sermon is any good, they will forget that you promised three parts by the time you are deep into part two. At that point you can do whatever you want. People will just assume you had a third part, somewhere. Not that this is a good sermon, anyway.
