Thought for the day, Wednesday 4th September

“”Human beings, vegetables, cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.” Albert Einstein, interview

Those who, like Einstein, come daily into contact with the physical laws that order the universe cannot help but catch the strains of that great dance in which we are all whirling. Whether it be in the intricacy of cellular formation, or in the flow of currents, or in the vast patterning of the stellar orbits that illuminate the heavens, scientists are privileged too see into the structure of that dance.

The inapprehensible motion of life escapes our daily awareness, as does the tune of the cosmic dust that orders us all in one great dance of life. We do not hear it playing until we come to a point where our ordinary and subtle senses are aligned together. Then we come into harmony and awareness of both worlds at once, the apparent and the unseen worlds in conscious communion within us. These privileged moments cannot be sought; they come unbidden, surprising us into mystical vision. It may be that when we interrupt a walk on a high place at evening to admire the view, we apprehend the revolution of the earth as a physical motion beneath our feet; it may be that we become aware of a rhythm that weaves about the steady beating of our own heart, as if it were a partner in the dance.

The resonances to which we respond and the relationship between ourselves and the music of life give us the only clues available about the nature of the invisible partner – clues reassuring enough that we can trust the source of our music.

Attune to the cosmic tune and rhythm of life; stand and dance.”

From The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews

This image of the region surrounding the reflection nebula Messier 78, just to the north of Orion’s belt, shows clouds of cosmic dust threaded through the nebula like a string of pearls. The submillimetre-wavelength observations, made with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope and shown here in orange, use the heat glow of interstellar dust grains to show astronomers where new stars are being formed. They are overlaid on a view of the region in visible light.

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