Indian Summeroil on canvas panel
To the best of my recollection, it may have been at the tender academic level of third grade that I was introduced to the spinning orbs that comprise our local solar system. In the bigger picture, of course, the time that has passed since my experience years ago within the confines of the four walls of classroom 3A, is very small indeed – yet it is large enough to have distorted my understanding of some basic astrological facts. For example, I was set aright this week thanks to a kind of radio version of the daily almanac which informed the listening public last Wednesday that the earth would be at its perihelion, or its closest orbital position relative to the sun.
My thought was, “How can that be?” I knew about the elliptical shape of earth’s orbit and, since the frigid palm of Old Man Winter had been smacking me briskly about the face and ears, wouldn’t that indicate that earth was, in fact, at its farthest point along its orbit of the big Hot Potato? Actually, no. Surprisingly, the farthest point from the sun (the aphelion) will occur sometime during the sweltering days of July. As it turns out, the difference of three million miles doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, and the seasons are determined by the tilt of the earth’s axis as it spins. Tilting away from the sun brings the cold temps of winter, and when the earth works its way around to the opposite side of the big spud, its tilt toward the sun is what causes the noticeable degradation of my wife’s generally pleasant demeanor, exacerbated in direct relation to the mercurial climb along the inside of the thin glass tube of the thermometer.
I’ve been strangely enamored of late with the ritual dance of earth, moon and sun, but all that aside, my confusion over the perihelion thing brought home an obvious assertion that I’ve held to for some time - the unchanging nature of reality in relation to man’s varied and evolving belief systems.
Whether these belief systems are constructs rooted in philosophy, theology, or our understandings of the physical universe, radical shifts in the accepted views in these areas are ultimately rather meaningless. The earth did not morph from a flattened surface to a rounded sphere when man’s understanding acknowledged its true shape. Galileo did not cause the sun to suddenly stop in its tracks, thereby pulling the earth out of stagnation and into a sudden orbit around it (elliptical in nature and with its annual perihelion and aphelion stages). The very nature and existence of mankind or of our God does not rise nor fall with our varied descriptions, denials, or affirmations of same – whether right or wrong. All these remain unaffected. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
