My conversation with... Jennifer Wiseman

Re-enchanting podcast guest Jennifer Wiseman shared an infectious wonder at the universe. Podcast co-host Belle Tindall reflects on their conversation.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen.

Four stars scintilate above a spiral galaxy viewed from the side.

Hubble Space Telescope captures a side-on view of NGC 3568, a barred spiral galaxy roughly 57 million light-years from the Milky Way.

European Space Agency, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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The details of astronomy, the workings of astrophysics, the enormity of space, the fact that the universe is still expanding by the moment, the mystery of what lies beyond what we can see and even predict – those are things that do not sit comfortably in the confines of my brain.

It’s as if my brain is allergic to the sheer enormity of the subject. My mind does deep, it does not take lightly to vast.

And that is precisely why I so thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with astronomer, author and speaker, Dr Jennifer Wiseman for the Re-Enchanting podcast. Jennifer is Director Emeritus of the programme of Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also a senior astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre. Science is a means by which Jennifer is able to live a wonderfully curious life, marvelling at the natural world and what lies beyond it.

When the narrative of science and religion being ultimately and inevitably at war with each other is the narrative that gets (by far) the most amplification, it was really interesting to hear how they coincide so powerfully for Jennifer. When talking with her, it becomes clear that they co-exist, they are the symbiotic forces that fuel her wonder at the universe. A wonder that is undeniably infectious. As she pointed out, the very fact that we have a curiosity about the universe we find ourselves in is, in itself, something to marvel at.

‘We are here, we’ve come through this 13.8 billion year development of the universe to the point where we can have this self-contemplating life that recognises a bit of where we’ve come from and how we connect to the universe.’

These are surely the thoughts that existential crises are made of.

Speaking with Jennifer made me feel small. Small in time, and small in place. I suppose dwelling on the enormity of an ever-expanding universe will do that to a person. Afterall, there are around one hundred billion stars in our galaxy (that we know of), the closest of which is four lightyears away. The vast majority of these stars have their own solar systems, hosting their own planets that orbit around them. And that’s still only within the confines of our own cosmic neighbourhood; there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our (observable) universe, and infinite mystery that sits far beyond these numbers.

Since our conversation, I’ve been left with this simple, but salient thought – we’re incredibly small. But further to that, I’ve been pondering the notion that there’s a good kind of small, and perhaps we are it. We may be just one of the eight-billion inhabitants of a ‘pale blue dot’ in a universe that stretches far beyond the capacities of human understanding and measurement, but there’s a profound beauty in that. It does not equate to a feeling of non-consequentialism or oblivion, on the contrary, it is deeply empowering. It is, after all, the powerful reality upon which much of the twelve steps of recovery offered by AA/NA is built. There is a mysterious, and yet obviously tangible, power in coming face-to-face with our own small-ness, and surrendering to that which is deeper, higher, bigger than us.

Learning a little about Jennifer’s childhood living among the Ozark Mountains, with evenings spent gazing up at a canopy of stars that stretched from ‘horizon to horizon’, it was enchanting to hear about how her career has been an out-living of a childhood appreciation for the things that are so much bigger than us mere humans.

If you have a pull towards all things astronomy, this episode is undoubtedly for you. If you’ve ever pondered what science and faith look like when they’re not entering the ring from different corners, readying themselves for a show-down, this episode is also for you. If you’re craving enchantment of the most cosmic kind, this episode is for you too.

This conversation with Dr Jennifer Wiseman will be a refreshing antidote to the disillusion that comes with assuming we are the centre of our universe.

Listen to the Re-enchanting episode now.

Review

Awe and wonder

Culture

Music

20 November 2024

3 min read

Ezra Collective understands the where and how of transcendence

Dance music allows us to encounter what’s ’beyond our ken’.

Josh Richards

Josh is a curate in London, and is completing a PhD in theology.

Concert goes stand, bathed in warm light, raising their hands in the air, facing away from the camera to the stage

Like so many, I came across the Ezra Collective after the band won the Mercury Prize for the album "Where I'm Meant To Be". So, I was primed to listen to its new album, 'Dance, No One's Watching' Yet I was not expecting it to impact me so profoundly.

The album is divided into four acts, each depicting a stage of a night out: 'cloakroom link up'; 'in the dance'; 'our element'; and 'lights on'. The night out is given structure as if it were itself a work of art or even a liturgy, the agreed form of words and movement that shapes acts of public worship. And then, at the heart of the album, I heard 'Hear My Cry' and I realised the claim was a stronger one: this wasn't just like worship.

As this track kicked in, I experienced a moment of visceral recognition. I was taken back to a church in Hackney, where those riffs had been accompanied by lyrics of praise. Suddenly I was there again, in the midst of that community, crying out: "When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I!"

Speaking to Apple Music about this song, bandleader Femi Koleoso said:

“I wanted the record to take us to the church dance floor now. It’s all about how the dance floor can feel bigger than you, it can sweep you up and overcome your feelings of overwhelm.”

As I continued to listen, I was also struck by the beautiful closing track, 'Everybody'. On investigation, I discovered that it was also a reworking of a praise song, 'Everybody Blow Your Trumpet'. The album interprets a night of dancing as culminating in praise to God. The inclusion of those instrumentals, 'Hear My Cry' and 'Everybody' add resonance and heft to the refrain of the album's lead single, 'God Gave Me Feet For Dancing', where the transcendent is touched and named, albeit gently, as God.

In his new book, Cosmic Connections (reviewed for Seen & Unseen by Paul Weston), Charles Taylor argues that poetry "reveals to us, brings us into contact with, a deeper reality which would otherwise remain beyond our ken." While modern Western societies lack a shared structure of meaning or enchantment around which, traditionally, cultures were organised, poetry offers fragmentary contact with the transcendent through experience.

'Dance, No One's Watching' shows us that what Taylor suggests of poetry is true of dance. It demonstrates the power of music—and of our participation in that music—to lead us into an encounter with something "beyond our ken".

Much of “Dance No One's Watching" proceeds without words. Whereas poetry can name what is encountered, music can struggle to do so, leaving the emotions it generates in need of direction at best and open to manipulation at worst. And yet, by situating their music in the experience and memories of specific communities, including churches, Ezra Collective prevents this encounter becoming a vague experience of transcendence.

There is a hospitality, a pluralism, to the album's understanding of where and how transcendence is encountered but it is not relativism. Even as different genres and contexts are explored, the particularity remains.

Just as the album reminds us that every church should be a dance floor, it raises the possibility that churches can help us all see God as the one who gave us feet for dancing and to find Him on every dance floor.