Last week I reflected on the unthinkable becoming reality. It turns out there were more unthinkable moments ahead. It truly shows how serious this crisis is when my post last week is woefully out of date. This week, I want to share with you what I shared with my parish. This is a Pastor’s response to his people. Parishioners of mine have lost their jobs, fear how they are going to feed their children, and today it was announced the state of Wisconsin is moving to home confinement to flatten the curve of the spread of this virus. I wish I could wax eloquently today with you on the questions of faith and astronomy. Instead, I simply offer the following resources and message I have shared with my parishioners: God will see us through this crisis. Just to clarify, the resources below in no way reflect anything official from the Vatican. Writing for Sacred Space Astronomy, people sometimes presume that … Continue reading →

I am a week away from starting my sabbatical! Many have asked, “Father, are you excited to go to Arizona?” I must admit that it is an odd question to answer. I know that I need a sabbatical and that this time of rest will be very good for me. Still, I’m feeling the tug to stay at the parish, experiencing feelings of missing my family, both my parish and on the farm, before departure. In those times of mixed emotions, I have reminded myself of what our Vicar of Clergy told me is the first lesson of sabbatical – “James, the parish will be fine without you.” One of the aspects of sabbatical I am greatly looking forward to is having the weekends to myself. One of my goals for these weekends is to do some astrophotography along with other “shutter bug” projects. To have ten weekends to shoot the stars in one of the best places on Earth … Continue reading →

“Hey Father, did you hear that Beetlejuice is going to explode tomorrow?” Whenever I hear such statements, my first response is always a smile at the mispronunciation of Betelgeuse. A couple years back, I shared with Br. Guy how I was a little embarrassed to find some missed typos in my first book, God’s Canvas, after it had been published. Br. Guy consoled me by sharing that it was a couple years before someone pointed out that the star “Betelgeuse” was misspelled “Betelguese” in his book, Turn Left at Orion (and the misspelling wasn’t his fault). It was one of those beautiful moments of realizing nobody is perfect and I shouldn’t expect that I would be any different. The second response when hearing of Betelgeuse’s impending demise was, “Oh boy… here we go again.” Whether it be Mayan Calendars supposedly predicting the end of the world, a comet that will destroy the Earth from three astronomical units away (meaning three … Continue reading →

This past year has been an important one for me in regard to astronomy and faith. Though I have dabbled with simple forms of astrophotography in the past, I decided to take the plunge and learn how to take high quality images of the night sky instead of just using online services to image the heavens. As is the case for many, I always felt intimidated when trying to do astrophotography. If you do a quick Google search on the subject, you will be introduced to many confusing articles and videos with equipment that can approach the price of a small car. Since my first attempts at astrophotography were in the film days, the expense combined with past failure seemed too risky. Then a friend of mine who lives in Arizona, Ken Walsh, introduced me to a “fund me” campaign for a “point and shoot” astronomy camera called the Nano 1. The promise of doing astrophotography in a point and … Continue reading →

What does it really mean to see God as Creator? One of the most foundational statements about God is that God is Creator, bringing all things into being from nothing. This is well and good, but it leads to another question: How does God create? This question reemerged in my thoughts at our parish’s Saint Nicholas Party. Every year, St. Olaf Parish holds a party for our youth around the date of St. Nicholas. We tell the story of this great saint, helping our youth understand the origins of what our culture presents as the celebration of Christmas. It acts as a fun evening celebration with stories, music, games, and activities. Here is a summary of his life, including reference to the dowry he secretly gave to a poor family so their daughters could marry, which morphed into the gift giving we do in our modern celebration of Christmas. My part of the evening is to provide an activity by … Continue reading →

As I write this post, we are only minutes away from the transit of Mercury across the Sun (click this link from EarthSky for a little more information). It was my hope to do my first LiveStream on Sacred Space Astronomy, talking with you live about the transit from my rectory office, showing real time video from my small h-alpha telescope, and give you a presentation about the connection between this transit and the Catholic Priest, Pierre Gassendi. The reason I didn’t promote this little event was because Wisconsin is notorious for cloud cover at this time of year. And, as fate may have it, even though the Weather Channel claims the skies over my house are clear – It’s cloudy. Nevertheless, Sacred Space Astronomy has wonderful resources about Pierre Gassendi. Christopher Graney wrote a marvelous post about the rare books collection at the University of Louisville that includes Pierre Gassendi’s work, Institutio Astronomica juxta Hypotheses tam Veterum quàm Recentiorum. … Continue reading →