The Backyard Glory Particle: Where is Yours?
Do you know those moments when the clouds are on fire, when the air shreds into a thousand gulls,
when the ocean lays poems of kelp on your beach,
and the mountains hover beneath a ghosting moon?
What do we say in those moments? What do we see?
Two summers ago, when “the missing cornerstone of particle physics” was hailed and discovered two summers ago, the Higgs particle, scientists cheered and thanked “Nature.” Do you remember? Others praised God for yet another window on his presence in the world. Some applauded the proof that God is no longer necessary to explain the universe.
Lawrence Krauss, director of the Origins Project at Arizona University, is one of the exultant ones, who is sure the Higgs particle will erase the need for God. “The Higgs particle is now arguable more relevant than God,” he writes. His explanation for the universe, beyond the scientific particulars, is now this: “Everything we see could have emerged as a purposeless quantum burp in space. “
Have any of you had this conversation yet with your children or grandchildren?
“Where do I come from? How did all this world get here so big and beautiful?”
“Honey, Sweetie, I’m so glad you asked! Scientists have finally told us. We’re all a meaningless quantum burp from space. Isn’t that wonderful?”
I will not argue with Krauss, who is clearly investing his scientific career in trying to make God disappear, but I will present my own evidence gathered just this week in favor of the God of the particle, or what I am calling the Glory particle, evidence I did not have to wait 500 trillion collisions to collect. I needed only open eyes and a camera. The rest was given----for nothing. I share it with you:
(Even the outhouse is lit glorious by this radiance)
Whose glory is it? It’s not mine—or yours. We don’t own it, we can’t buy it or schedule it or even quantify it. We are lucky if we can witness just pieces and moments of it, and the luckiest ones of all are those who know whose it is, who absorb all the beauty and astonishment, and give it all back, as they can. As I am trying to do now.
The scientists are far from done. Indeed, they are just beginning. "The dream is to find an ultimate theory that explains everything. We are far from that," says Fabiola Gionatti, the head of the ATLAS team of scientists.
I won’t be waiting for them to find an “ultimate theory.” I’ll cheer them on, but I’ll simply look out my window, eyes and soul open to the One who Made it All, the God of Everything, who somehow filled us as well with particles of glory. I see them in you. I feel them in me. Maybe our witness and our wonder, in some small way, helps bind this whole world together as well.
I’ll do my part.
And you, are you seeing the glory particles there in your backyard?
Don't be silent. Don't make the rocks cry out.
Speak, sing, weave, photograph, paint, sculpt----
Praise!
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