It Is a Small World

by Karen A. Bellenir

I remember when the earth seemed unimaginably large. It’s still easy to feel that way. If I spread a blanket on the grass and look up at the sky, I can imagine a gigantic planet spinning beneath me. I’m an infinitesimal speck, hanging on for the ride. If I stand on the shore and look out to the horizon, the earth’s waters stretch as far as I can see. It seems endless.

 Early explorers probably had a similar sense of the earth’s vastness. The first sailing expedition to make it all the way around the world took three years. Ferdinand Magellan left Spain in September 1519 with five ships and 270 crewmen. Along the way, ships and crewmen were lost. Magellan himself was killed in the Philippine islands. In September 1522, just one ship, under the command of Captain Juan Sebastian Elcano, arrived back at the starting point.

 If you measure the size of the earth by the time it takes to go around it, technological innovations have contributed to some shrinking. The current record for the fastest circumnavigation by sea was set in January 2017 by the crew of IDEC Sport, a racing trimaran. They completed the journey in just a few minutes less than 41 days. The fastest solo aerial circumnavigation (at least so far) was accomplished in 67 hours by Steve Fossett in 2005. The International Space Station completes a circumnavigation about once every ninety minutes.

 Earth’s circumference, measured around the equator, is 24,901.4 miles. This may seem like a huge number, but it is comprehendible. Say you know someone who commutes from Farmville to a job in the Richmond area (or vice versa). The drive might be fifty or sixty miles for places between Midlothian and downtown Richmond. Let’s pick an average of fifty-five miles, a 110-mile round trip. Suppose there are five working days per week. But, because of vacations, holidays, and sick days, the annual travel requirement corresponds to forty-eight weeks, representing a total of 240 round trips. Do the math: 240 round trips at 110 miles equals 26,400 miles. A person with this type of commute drives the equivalent of completely around the world every year with almost 1,500 miles left over. That’s enough extra to drive from Farmville to Burlington, Colorado (off I-70 just west of the Kansas state line).

 Would you rather walk? According to Jeremy DeSilva, paleoanthropologist and author of First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human, the average person will take approximately 150 million steps during his or her lifetime. He claims that’s enough steps to walk around the world, not once, not twice, but three times.

 The amount of planetary space per person is also shrinking as earth’s population grows. For the first several millennia of human history, human populations chugged along with gradually increasing numbers. It wasn’t until 1800 that people reached their first billion. It took 127 years to reach the second billion. Today, less than 100 more years, we’re just a bit shy of eight billion. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

 According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, approximately three billion people rely on seafood for a significant amount of their protein, but ninety percent of fish populations are facing challenges. Habitat losses and catch rates that do not permit stocks to recover have led to collapses of many important fisheries. The ocean is running out of fish.

 Other planetary resources that once seemed limitless are proving to be finite. Although humanity often viewed earth’s resources as inexhaustible, this has never been true. Droughts bring water scarcity. Depleted soils lead to loss of agricultural productivity. Mines give out. Being careless with resources leads to crises that emphasize the fragility of our small planet’s equilibrium.

 Earth Day, which falls on April 22, provides an opportunity to consider how wisely precious resources are being used. The focal theme this year, invest in our planet, challenges individuals, businesses, and governments to consider pathways to sustainable prosperity. Some people will participate in organized events. Others prefer individual tasks, such as recycling or upcycling, purchasing reusable products, picking up trash, or planting a tree. The health of our world is in our hands.

(Reprinted from the author’s newspaper column in The Farmville Herald, April 2022)

Peace on Earth

by Karen A. Bellenir

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew (Image Credit: NASA).

Decorations have sprouted all around town, trees are erected indoors, and colorful lights sparkle through the long nights. Once again, it’s time to tell the Christmas story and present seasonal pageants. One of the most familiar lines of dialog comes from the heavenly host quoted in Luke’s gospel, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The longing for peace on earth has persisted for millennia. According to biblical narratives, the ancient Israelites received instructions for peace offerings, they prayed for peace, and their prophets described visions of peace. Many other religious families and cultures have also embraced the ideal of peace. Buddhists seek an inner peace that they believe will ultimately lead to its manifestation in the world. The Islamic faith takes its name from the same root as the Arabic word for peace, salaam. In 1991, the United Nations established an International Day of Peace (September 21). Yet, achieving peace on earth seems an elusive goal.

One of my favorite symbols representing the longing for peace on earth is a photograph taken on December 7, 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 moon mission. Perhaps you’ve seen it. It has come to be known as the Blue Marble. It shows our planet from the astronauts’ vantage point. Earth’s oceans create a predominantly blue orb. White clouds swirl across its face. Stripes of brown desert flank streaks of fertile green lands.

The image shows the earth amidst the blackness and emptiness of space, a solitary vessel sailing across a vast celestial ocean. It is beautiful, fragile, and small, just a tiny piece of the cosmos, but it houses all of humanity. Our families, our friends, our neighbors, and even our enemies. Ordinary people, those we admire as heroes, and those we view as villains. Everyone.

Additional images taken from orbiting satellites and by other astronauts reinforce the Blue Marble’s message by showcasing earth’s beauty. They show river systems, mountain ranges, and coastlines. They highlight auroras, clouds, and icebergs. They capture moon rises and sunsets and show off the thin azure wrapping of atmosphere that separates our planet from the inhospitable void of space beyond. Other images highlight the planet’s fragility. They depict the sad results of natural and man-made calamities that have upset delicate balances needed to sustain living ecosystems. These images portray algae blooms, deforestation, air pollution, light pollution, smoke plumes from giant wildfires, habitat losses, coastal erosion, drought, landslides, floods, oil slicks, and the effects of hurricanes, tornados, and derechos.

Whenever I see the Blue Marble picture, it makes me think about how the earth must appear from God’s perspective. I recall the song “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” and envision everyone and everything featured in its many and varied verses. The itty bitty baby, my brothers and my sisters, the birds in the air, the fish in the sea, the rivers and the mountains, the wind and the rain, the sun and the moon, everybody here, everybody there. He’s got the whole world in his hands. All in God’s care.

As this challenging year of 2020 winds down and we approach Christmas, I am reminded that God thought the inhabitants of planet earth were sufficiently treasured to warrant a personal visit and heavenly message of peace and goodwill. I also recall what Jesus said to his disciples near the end of his earthly life, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all people know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:34-35).

My Christmas hope is that we can set aside the divisions, the slanders, and the anger that have seeped into our world, our nation, our communities, and even our families. Instead let us focus on the fact that all of us and all of them, everybody here and everybody there, all creatures big and small, and even the earth’s life-sustaining ecosystems, share this magnificent bit of God’s creation. Let us resolve to love one another and spread peace and goodwill. Merry Christmas.

(Reprinted from the author’s newspaper column in The Farmville Herald, December 4, 2020)

Extraterrestrial Life

Photograph by Pioneer Venus Orbiter Cloud Photopolarimeter, collected 5-14-88. 10th anniversary release Venus image 7540. NASA ID: ARC-1988-AC78-9461.

 By Karen A. Bellenir

Last month, scientists reported detecting a chemical called phosphine (PH[sub]3) in the Venusian clouds (Greaves, J.S., Richards, A.M.S., Bains, W. et al. Phosphine gas in the cloud decks of Venus. Nat Astron (2020)). Phosphine also exists elsewhere in the solar system. It occurs on Jupiter, for example, produced by that planet’s deep, highly pressurized atmosphere. On Earth, with its different planetary structure, the chemical can be produced by biological processes. The study’s authors claim that phosphine’s presence in the clouds above Venus could be the result of “unknown photochemistry or geochemistry, or by analogy with the biological production of PH[sub]3 on Earth, from the presence of life.”

In other words, they found something they can’t explain. Further investigation offers an exciting opportunity to expand scientific understanding.

Some Christian pundits claim that extraterrestrial life cannot exist because the Bible doesn’t mention it. By this logic, Australia doesn’t exist. Neither did any of the ancient Far East or Mesoamerican civilizations. Baseball might be possible, thanks to the joke about what happens “in the big inning” (go ahead and groan) but certainly not tennis, soccer, or croquet.

The logic of the assertion against extraterrestrial life is faulty. The Bible itself never claims to be all inclusive. In fact, it seems to state precisely the opposite. John’s gospel concludes with this note: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were everyone of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25 ESV). Whether this statement refers only to Jesus during his incarnation or to the entire spectrum of divine action, it seems to acknowledge that the written record inscribed on pages we can hold in our hands represents only a tiny glimpse at what God has done.

Future scientific research may or may not detect life elsewhere in the universe. From the perspective of astrobiologists, both outcomes remain possible. Before rushing to hasty conclusions, I encourage contemporary theologians to remember that their predecessors who insisted on a geocentric model of the solar system ended up on the wrong side of reality. If today’s Christians hope to offer a meaningful message to the world, they might have more success if they refrain from putting artificial limits on what God can do.