What’s in a name…

by Patricia O'Neill

The Lord heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds

He determines the number of the stars, he gives to all of them their names

Psalm 147 v 3 - 4

My convent schooling offered an eccentric curriculum. One of its singular features was that it taught no science; at least, we were taught something oddly called 'Human Biology', odd in that I can't remember getting any further than the frog. I think there was a suspicion that science was unnecessary and probably unladylike; a conclusion that has led in my case to some unfortunate electrical excitements. As I have seen my children and my grandchildren exploring the world through science, their excitement and knowledge expanding as they grow in insight into this way of understanding the world, I have often felt the loss of this perspective. I’ve picked up bits of information, in particular, remedying my knowledge of human biology, but cosmology is just baffling.

My childhood experience of lying in a field, gazing up at the infinity of stars, becoming aware of my tininess, is the closest I can get to an entry into cosmology, but it doesn’t offer any entry into scientific understanding. It does, however, put me into the category of people who share the same sense of wonder at the unfathomable complexity of it all, its symmetry, its beauty, its delicate calibration and this category includes scientists from all disciplines. Similarly, most people have the humility to recognise that there may be mysteries we can never understand and find that consoling rather than frustrating, since we are all mere mortals. It may be that where we differ is in the naming: I choose to call the unknown: God, but not a magic finger God, a celestial chef or arbitrary interventionist God. This God is present in the stars and the anthills, in laughter and pain and desolation, in kindness and compassion, wherever we find love, there is God, the sacred mystery at the heart of it all.