Photo: By Karly Santiago on Unsplash.
Eye - 20 September 2024
Exploring faith and science with Thee Quaker Podcast, 'a very old Quaker in Worthing', glimmers, hobbies, and well-loved phrases
One stitch at a time
Hobbies can bring joy and unexpected insights. Have you discovered a hobby that has enriched your life?
Exploring faith and science
‘The Astronomical Life of Quaker Scientist Jocelyn Bell Burnell’ is the topic of a recent episode of Thee Quaker Podcast (https://bit.ly/TheeQuakerJocel...).
Jocelyn is interviewed by Naveed Moeed, a Quaker with a PhD in astrophysics.
The interview covers Jocelyn’s early years in Northern Ireland as a birthright Quaker. She was raised in the evangelical tradition, then attended a Quaker boarding school, where she encountered liberal Quakerism.
Moving into her academic career, the pair discuss the misogyny Jocelyn encountered at university, both at undergraduate and graduate level.
She discovered pulsars in 1967, but the Nobel Prize in Physics went to her male colleagues.
Naveed delves into Jocelyn’s ongoing work promoting girls and women in STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Finally the conversation turns to the commonalities shared by Jocelyn’s faith and by the scientific method. They two identify a need to be uncomfortable in both: ‘in both you have to be open minded’.
‘I live in the knowledge that things do not go on forever. Our lives don’t go on forever. This universe won’t go on forever. There may be other universes, there may not. If anything, it adds a bit of immediacy, you know, better make good use of it while we’ve got it…’
Getting on
I’m a very old Quaker in Worthing
And I wonder ‘Is life worth preserving?’
But I still look for fun
At a hundred and one
Which I find is a trifle unnerving.
by Alec Davison
Well-loved phrases
Eye invites you to contemplate well-loved phrases from Quaker texts by picking up a pen or pencil and colouring, doodling… whatever moves you! This week, the phrase is from Quaker faith & practice 19.32.
Glimmers
What are you grateful for this week?
