Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
In which I recommend a play and cite a song that supposedly celebrates an acid trip

In which I recommend a play and cite a song that supposedly celebrates an acid trip

Last updated on: August 2, 2022 at 11:03 pm by Dan Peterson

In which I recommend a play and cite a song that supposedly celebrates an acid trip 2022-08-02T23:03:36-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

President Joe Biden unveiled this image of galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, during a White House event on Monday, 11 July 2022.
Webb’s image covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground — and reveals thousands of galaxies in a tiny sliver of an inconceivably vast universe
(Public domain image from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)

I hope to see you at the annual FAIR conference this week. It begins tomorrow (Wednesday) and will continue through my sorry performance late on Friday afternoon or relatively early on Friday evening.

***

Last night, my wife and I shared a meal with sixteen of our closest friends in a restaurant in Draper and then attended a performance of Silent Sky at the Hale Centre Theatre in Sandy. As far as I could tell, all of us thoroughly enjoyed it. I certainly did.

Silent Sky is based on the remarkable true story of Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921), who, despite the sadly limited opportunities available to women at the time and although she died relatively young, made a major discovery while working at the Harvard College Observatory that was eventually used to prove that many other galaxies in exist in the universe beyond our own Milky Way. Eventually, “Leavitt’s Law” was also fundamental to the work of Edwin Hubble in demonstrating that the universe is expanding. (Hubble said that she should have won the Nobel Prize.) A number of years ago, I read and really liked George Johnson’s 2006 book Miss Leavitt’s Stars: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Discovered How to Measure the Universe and Dava Sobel’s 2016 publication of The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars.

By the way, the performance is accompanied by a display in the theater’s lobby that includes replicas of the tools and the notebooks that were used to measure stars by the women portrayed in the play. The theater credits Dr. Sarah Lavalee and the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University for their generous cooperation in granting access to the relevant archived materials. Moreover, the final image of the show appears courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope and NASA. It was taken from among a group of Webb images that were only released to the public on 12 July 2022. On a personal note: My attendance at last night’s performance of Silent Sky couldn’t possibly have been more timely for me than it was: Just yesterday, I published an article in Meridian Magazine that is a reflection on one of the images from, well, the Webb Space Telescope:

Please see my little essay on “Contemplating Our Place in the Vastness of the Universe.”

One quibble: The play, written by Lauren Gunderson and dating to 2015, depicts Henrietta Swan Leavitt as agnostic or indifferent toward religion. I would need to return to the two books mentioned above in order to check what they might have to say about the issue. But she was, as the play itself depicts her, the daughter of a Congregationalist minister and, much more to the point, the Wikipedia article about her says that “Henrietta Leavitt remained deeply religious and committed to her church throughout her life.”

As I write, I’ve been listening to music by The Byrds, who were one of my very favorite rock bands as I was growing up in 1960s California. (I once saw them perform live, and I saw individual members of the group perform independently thereafter. I was a serious fan. They’re why I own a twelve-string guitar.). Curiously, precisely as I finished the words above, I heard the Byrds play “5D (Fifth Dimension),” which has always been a personal favorite, despite the fact that it’s often explained as essentially a description of a trip on LSD. Even though I don’t do acid and have never done acid and don’t believe that people ought to do acid, I don’t automatically discount absolutely everything that some have perceived during such experiences. (See Aldous Huxley on this issue, in his book The Doors of Perception.) But Jim McGuinn (now Roger McGuinn), who wrote the song, strenuously denied that it was about LSD, and was apparently rather upset by the allegation. He said that it was based on his reading about Einstein and relativity. Anyway, here are the lyrics. I’ve emphasized the words that stood out to me just now:

Oh, how is it that I could come out to here
And be still floating
And never hit bottom and keep falling through
Just relaxed and paying attention?
All my two-dimensional boundaries were gone;
I had lost to them badly.
I saw that world crumble and thought I was dead
But I found my senses still working.
And as I continued to drop through the hole
I found all surrounding
To show me that joy innocently is.
Just be quiet and feel it around you.
And I opened my heart to the whole universe
And I found it was loving.
And I saw the great blunder my teachers had made:
Scientific delirium, madness.
I will keep falling as long as I live.
Ah, without ending.
And I will remember the place that is now
That has ended before the beginning.
Oh, how is it that I could come out to here
And be still floating,
And never hit bottom and keep falling through
Just relaxed and paying attention?

***

I close with a relevant quotation from Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space , written by the late astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan (1934-1996):

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?” Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.” A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.

I suppose that my essay for Meridian Magazine could be seen as something of a nod in the direction of Dr. Sagan’s lament.

Center for Astrophysics

Harvard College Observatory

Harvard University

Henrietta Leavitt

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

James Webb

James Webb Space Telescope

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Webb's First Deep Field

Previous Post

August 1, 2022

In which I try again

Next Post

August 2, 2022 A Powerful and Very Private Spiritual Experience

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Jezebel" mean in Hebrew?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Daughter of Baal The Lord reigns Unexalted Queen of the people