Homage to Hubble

In the beginning

when God began to create the heavens and the earth,

the universe was a formless void

and light had not yet illuminated the face of the deep.

“Pinwheels of stars,

gauzy pillars of gas and dust,

and bright galaxies scattered across a dark backdrop”*

barely perceived their neighbor in the Milky Way Galaxy of the Virgo Supercluster,

but on April 24, 1990

the third planet from a no name star in that galaxy

boldly took notice of its neighbors.

“Nebulae, distant galaxies and nearby planets,”*

observed from 250 miles above its surface

appeared like accidental spatters of paint and brushstrokes of light

on a master painters three dimensional black canvas,

giving Hubble’s creators an eyeful of a glorious cosmos.

From stardust its makers came,

and to stardust they shall return,

but for one glorious millisecond blink of the human eye

they beheld the face of God.

*I was inspired to write this after reading the back page article of the April 14, 2015 edition of USA Today, Hubble Telescope Turns 25 by Traci Watson. The two descriptive phrases in quotation marks are taken from that article.