THE SIZE OF THE UNIVERSE

“I took some courses at the Oranim college, and I was taking a particular course there in microbiology. Then I studied something related to the structure of the universe. I forget the exact name of it at the moment, but it had to do with the entire infrastructure of the universe and space. The size of the universe is so great that a person can’t possibly grasp the size of it; it’s too big for us. The distances between the stars are so great that it’s just impossible to understand. It’s the exact opposite in microbiology. For example, through a microscope you see cells, and within those cells are different divisions; within any particular cell there’s an entire universe in it of itself. You see that everything is in an exact place and performs its exact function. It runs like a clock. It performs in an ideal way, and there’s no other way to describe it. So it was from that experience of science that I started to think about returning to religion.”

Daniel’s Reflection

The most spiritual thing I ever saw was an IMAX movie about the Hubble Telescope. In that movie, it showed millions and millions of galaxies, even a “nursery” in the universe where new galaxies were being born. And I understood for the first time that I could not understand the totality of the universe and, in turn, that I as a human could never fully understand God. In that moment, I got the message that God was bigger than any thoughts I can have of Him or Her. It feels strangely comforting to feel small.

There is a healing method called “Systemic Constellation” that I learned through my friends and teachers, Kenn Day and Patricia Sheerin. In it you work to return things to their natural order. One of the most common issues is when children become bigger than parents, such as when a parent becomes dependent emotionally on their child instead of emotionally intimate with their spouse. And, in the constellation work, the child bows to the parents and says, “You are big and I am little.” I never realized before doing that work what a relief it is to feel little. I even remember once telling a realtor when I was considering purchasing real estate in Colorado that “I want to feel small” when I looked out the window and up at the mountains and the plains.

So much of life seems to be about gaining control over people, places, and things. Sana Turk’s interview reminds me of the gloriousness of feeling small and being a part of creation—and not trying to be the center of it, much less being the Creator.