All awash with angels

and where in the world is God

Dear Friends,

Are you following? This spring the James Webb Space Telescope discovered 2 new galaxies! And when I say “new,” I mean new to us. JADES-GS-z14-0 and JADES-GS-z14-1 have actually been around for some time: they were created 100-200 million years after the Big Bang.

Part of what’s fascinating here is that through this discovery, scientists are coming close to what they call “the infancy of the Universe.”¹ Based on their estimation of its age, these two galaxies are the oldest we’ve ever seen.

Also fascinating: JADES-GS-z14-0 is exceptionally bright— and scientists aren’t sure what this means. It could mean the galaxy has a black hole at its center. These burn brightly before they collapse and disappear. But the other possibility is that the galaxy simply has an exceptional number of stars. Its star-forming region is reportedly huge, extending some 1700 light years. This literally enormous detail has big implications for how stars and galaxies are formed.

Not that I know these things. These things, truly, are of the sort I don’t typically know. But I do subscribe to Scientific American’s newsletter, and sometimes I read it. You know, just to learn things.

Something else I learned from these recent discoveries? Light coming from JADES-GS-z14-0 takes 13.5 billion light years to reach us.

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But you’re wondering why I’m talking about such things when we’re all just here for some definitions. You know what I mean, yes? Those words I asked you wonderful people to please define. I promised I’d give you the answers and said I’d do so today, on July 29th.

I’ll delay no further.²

Eminence is a position of prominence or superiority. This can be used in reference to a person (such as, apparently, a cardinal), and it can also describe something that stands out visually, as an elevated portion of a landscape.

Imminence refers to immediacy. While the words don’t seem to be related, that might nonetheless be a helpful clue. If something’s imminent, it’s about to happen. Everett’s answer from last week, “gonna happen soon, probably,” is spot-on.

Interestingly, Merriam-Webster provides a nice little paragraph on the shared Latin root of eminence and imminence, and I think you should go read it. But only if you want to (and of course you want to).

Meghan and Emily, you gave very good definitions of both of those words. And Everett (as I said above), was right about imminence, too. Well done, and thank you so much (all who did) for giving it a go.

Immanence gave everyone trouble, which is understandable. By the time you finish reading this newsletter, I want you to have no doubt what it means. It’s by far the rarest of the three in terms of use, but it’s very worthwhile.

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But I was talking about the James Webb Space Telescope and the discovery of two new galaxies. I mentioned them here because, you may recall, I’ve been on of late about presence— God’s presence, our presence— in the the world. We’re circumscribed in one place at a time. Our bodies mark the limits of the space we occupy. But God’s presence is understood to be repletive, which means that he’s fully everywhere in all places at all times.

This kind of thing is very challenging to comprehend, in my opinion. It makes God seem at a great remove from me— both because he’s so utterly different than I am, and because he knows and occupies distances and space that are beyond my imagining.

Take JADES-GS-z14-0, for example. I don’t doubt the article in Scientific American is telling me the truth. The scientists have made some important discoveries about real places that are 13 and a half billion light years away.

I also believe that God is there, in that galaxy— that he formed it by the power of his Word, that he knows every one of its stars. That he can measure the extent of its massive star-forming region within the span of his hand.

But of his repletive presence, this makes me think of his transcendence, by which I mean not only that he “exceeds usual limits,” (thank you, Merriam-Webster), but also that he himself lies beyond the limits of ordinary experience. That he is, in fact, beyond my comprehension.

It’s good perspective. It calls me to worship him.

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https://noah-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image_9951152.jpg

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"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts."

-Isaiah 55: 8-9

But my day-to-day doesn’t often find me considering outsize star-forming regions in galaxies at a distance of billions of light years. In truth, it never does. Almost never, anyway.

My day-to-day is small. It looks like brief panic in the post office this afternoon when I couldn’t find my debit card. Or sitting at my kitchen table, addressing invitations to my daughter’s wedding and completely messing up the letter “W” and wondering if we have extra envelopes.

It looks like folding laundry. Thinking (again) through the best approach for reading Matthew’s gospel with my freshmen in the upcoming school year. Getting out leftovers for dinner. Calling my parents. Changing the sheets. Walking the dog.

My daily life is small, and this is why I love the word “immanence.” It’s the other side of God’s transcendence, the aspect of his repletive presence that means he’s right where we are.

Immanence: the quality of state of being immanent.

Immanent: (1) indwelling, inherent; (2) being within the limits of possible experience or knowledge.

God’s repletive presence is in the world he created, so very in it that he is here, next to you, with you, close as breathing.

Paul said it this way: “In him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17: 28.

He is billions of light years away, and he is right here.

My guess is that you’re definitely more familiar with “immanence” than you realize. It shares the root of “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.”

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Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul   
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple   
As false dawn.
                     Outside the open window   
The morning air is all awash with angels.

    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,   
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.   
Now they are rising together in calm swells   
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear   
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

    Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving   
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden   
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                             The soul shrinks

    From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,   
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,   
The soul descends once more in bitter love   
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,   
    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;   
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,   
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating   
Of dark habits,
                      keeping their difficult balance.”

--Richard Wilbur

Our game for next time? Respond below with a decent name for JADES-GS-z14-0. We’ve absolutely got to have a better title for it than that.

Thanks as ever for reading, sharing, subscribing, whathaveyou.

With joy,

Rebecca

1. “James Webb Discovers Record-Distant Galaxy, Again.” Niels Bohr Institute, 30 May, 2024, https://nbi.ku.dk/english/news/news24/james-webb-discovers-record-distant-galaxy-again/

2. All definitions brought to you by Merriam-Webster.