We hope that you will enjoy this Spring issue of The New Age. The articles are varied, there is an absorbing sermon, an article on why the writer believes in God – which could well lead on to a series from others, maybe you too, on why you believe in God. There are several reports from societies around Australia and New Zealand and an article about the spiritual content in today’s movies. Information about the new New Church in Australia website. The regular President’s message, a book review on a new style of books coming from the Swedenborg Foundation in America, news about the coming Family Camp in Victoria in January, and other things, so plenty to enjoy and gain from.
We recently witnessed a lunar eclipse and most Australians had the opportunity to see it, clouds permitting. It was a blood-red moon, with the colour produced by the earth’s shadow falling on the moon’s surface for a while, presumbly projected by the sun’s rays from way behind. Eclipses and comets and constellations and sunrises give us a sense of awe that the cosmos is utterly vast and steadily continues its gyrations and changes while we here go about our lives experiencing aspirations, surprises, challenges, joys, sadness, births, deaths, successes and apparent failures. That cosmic steadiness is a helpful reminder of God with his orderliness and his Providence over everything.
I’ve been re-reading a novel by Thomas Hardy called ‘Two in a Tower’ in which a married lady meets an attractive young astronomer in the tower on her estate, gazing through a home-made telescope. She, smitten, encourages his work, and the whole book is the interplay between the goings-on in the night sky and the goings-on between these two individual people. Quite a powerful and meaningful parallel.
In daytime, the brightness of the sun hides the stars from us, but we see the world around us. At night time, it’s the reverse, and we no longer see the world around us because it’s grown dark; yet we see the stars and the great expanse of the universe. That seems to be saying something important about us seeing what we need to see, all the time.
