"Honey from Stone" is another work by scientist, astronomer, and naturalist Chet Raymo that would work well in the secondary school classroom. As much poet and nature writer as scientist, Mr. Raymo evokes through his writing the beauty and awe inherent to the natural world. His meditations are locally focused on the Dingle Peninsula in S.W. Ireland, and he uses the Roman Catholic monastic cycle of the prayer hours (matins, lauds, prime, terce, etc.) as a literary structure, a lens, around which to construct his book. He intertwines brilliantly the cyclical notion of the monastic hours, which is itself a reflection of the cycle of the day, to reflect the cycles in the natural world. Added to this are his creative and insightful use of the imagery of the specific hours that allows him to build an essay around a cluster of interconnected images. Central to this fusion of images are interwoven larger notions of prayer, the immanence of God, scientific history, Celtic mythology, and a humility that comes from clearly understanding our very small place in a very large universe. All of these interrelated ideas then orbit around the central questions that initiated his writing of "Honey from Stone" in the first place: "What is the relevance of traditional religion in the world described by contemporary science? Is scientific knowledge a satisfactory ground for the religious experience? Can the language of traditional religion constitute an appropriately modern language of praise (xi) ?" These questions strike me as important ones and important ones for our students to wrestle with.
An analysis of the complex evocative and conceptual beauty of each chapter would in itself become a dissertation. Selections from the first chapter "Matins" will hopefully give the reader some sense of how the other chapters of the book are artfully constructed.
"Matins," subtitled. "Put on your Jumping Shoes," begins with a discussion of the summer Perseid meteor shower, "the strongest shower of the year (3)." This discussion of meteor showers then leads into a discussion of comets, the comet Swift-Tuttle in particular, and the fact in "many parts of Europe the Perseid meteors are called the Tears of Saint Lawrence (5)." Pulling upon his childhood religious background and Christian hagiography, Mr. Raymo then tells the story of Saint Lawrence. The story centers on a confrontation between the saint and the emperor Decius when the emperor demanded that Lawrence worship the pagan gods. Lawrence’s answer and rhetorical question, "Whom should I adore, the Creator or the creature (6)," becomes then the moment for Mr. Raymo to reflect upon his vision of the night sky, to ask questions about the Creator and the creation. He does not see an obvious transcendent Creator, or maybe more accurately he might say we cannot know that transcendence. But he does see a world of immanence in the night sky: "The creation is here, palpably present, on this night of shooting stars. The sky weeps meteors. The Milky Way stands like a pillar on the sea. And where is the Creator, the God of Lawrence? Gone. Flown away on some heavenward trajectory, like Comet Swift-Tuttle, into the darkness at the edge of knowing (6)." The phrase "darkness at the edge of knowing," sets us up for the polarity of dark/light, night/ day, unknown/known, ignorance-unknown/knowledge- known, blindness/vision, darkness of space/light of stars and meteors, and transcendence/immanence. He weaves the next part of the essay around these themes and metaphors.
He then moves to a short summary of the trial of Galileo. Galileo’s forced recanting, which Mr. Raymo defines as, "not so much assent to the doctrine of the immobility of the Earth as a public affirmation of the Church’s authority(17)," becomes an opportunity for him to ruminate about the split between religion and science to the impoverishment of both. "As a consequence of the Galileo affair, the Church cut itself off from participation in one of the greatest adventures of the human spirit – the flight of the human imagination with the soaring Earth into a universe of unanticipated majesty and mystery. By forgoing the adventure of science, the Church lost the opportunity of informing the new enterprise with the light of the mystical tradition. In going their separate ways, the Church and science were each impoverished: The Church remained committed to narrowly anthropomorphic theologies of the past, and science was deprived of access to the Church’s rich traditional language of praise (17)."
These observations bring him back to the images of light and darkness, seen and unseen. He moves then to the Christian mystic Meister Elkhart’s quote, "My eye and the eye of god are one eye, one vision, one knowledge, one love (17)." This eye, this seeing of the beauty of the dark night sky and all its wonders, this knowledge and love that inspire awe, the quest for knowing, the humbleness of mystery are all core elements needed to breach that false schism between the best of what is science and religion are. "An infinite universe will always have the capacity to surprise. The Earth moves. And stones fall from heaven. Tonight, Perseids clatter to the Earth like hailstones. They embedded themselves in Artic ice caps. They sprinkle the forests of the Amazon with a fine cometary dust. Meteors clatter at my feet and I dance in the road. "Up noble soul!" cried Meister Eckhart. "Put on your jumping shoes which are intellect and love." I put on my jumping shoes and go leaping between the hedgerows (19)."
The last section of "Matins" is devoted to a discussion of meteors in general, supernovas and their role in the formation of our solar system, and the connection between meteors and amino acids, "the organic building blocks of the proteins (21)." "These are the chemical substrate for all life on earth (21)." "The Indians are right. Stones that fall from the night sky are messengers from heaven: In the mix of their elements they tell the story of our beginnings (22)." This final part of the essay that deals with the beginnings of life, like the beginnings of the prayer cycle and the day with "Matins," like the historical beginnings of our split between science and religion, like the beginnings of their reconciliation, brings Mr. Raymo full circle to a prayer of Saint Lawrence’s. "Night has no darkness for me, but all things become visible in the light (23)." Knowledge and mystery, awe and analysis do not have to be opposites when approaching the natural world. They are in fact compliments, badly needed ones in our modern world.
Each of the other essays in the book follow the same type of beautiful blending of image and metaphor, analysis and meaning. I cannot recommend this book too highly. It was a pleasure, joy and gift to read. A gift I hope we can pass on to our students.
Review ©2003 by Tom Collins and RSiSS
Palmer Trinity School
Miami, Florida