birth announcement

Did you know that there is a new star being born? I just learned from this BBC News article that astronomers are watching carefully as a new stellar system is born to see how the process works and what they might learn about how our solar system was born.

Water vapor pouring down supersonically in vast quantities, matter spinning wildly, extreme hot and cold temperatures, extreme pressure - sounds like an awfully intense atmosphere in the stellar delivery room.

But births seem rarely to be quiet, passive, calm processes. There is uncertainty, there is pain, there is intensity, there is chaos; new life does not arrive quietly and unobtrusively. The image of a stellar birth seems closer to human birth than the image of a green plant slowly, quietly pushing it's way through soil.

But possibly there is room for many birth metaphors, many images of new life. Sometimes in my life new birth arrives slowly and quietly like the green plant, and sometimes arrives with chaos, uncertainty and pain. And yet new life always comes, and re/birth seems to arrive regularly. Awesome.