Stephen Hawking has persevered for years with ALS, adapting to his increasingly limited communication through the use of assistive technology.  Now the gaze of his eyes allow him to choose characters, words, phrases which are turned into speech.  His name and reputation allow his "voice" to be heard all around the globe.

In a powerful video message sent to another world leading author Paulo Coelho (author of The Alchemist) Hawking tells of an upcoming meeting where a grand mission is being launched.  This is a vision of a world without extreme poverty, a world that is increasingly connected and educated.  This is a world that is sustainable for generations to come.  And it is an idea that is very timely when it seems that many forces are trying to divide people along lines of religion, along lines of political thinking and along lines of geographical power struggle.  By seeing people as "other" it is all too easy to marginalize them, think they must be destroyed or ignored.  This message is a message of hope and you can find it on Coelho's public site in the form of a video: https://www.facebook.com/paulocoelho/videos/10153597760671211/. 

On September 25th 2015, 193 world leaders will commit to 17 Global Goals to achieve 3 extraordinary things in the next 15 years. End extreme poverty. Fight inequality & injustice. Fix climate change. The Global Goals for sustainable development could get these things done. In all countries. For all people. The video ends with a call to spread the word about this visionary set of ideas.  Go and visit the site www.globalgoals.com. 

Infinity ... It is a challenging concept to understand even for mathematicians.  We use models to help us. The simplest being the counting numbers.  1, 2, 3 and then just keep going.  It never stops and that is the smallest example of infinite.  Still it is not graspable since we think of things like the universe as big and yet the number of all the atoms and particles are estimated to be just a finite but large number like 10^86.  Still a long way from infinite.  The 19th century mathematician Georg Cantor explored the nature of infinity, showing that some infinities are larger than others.  Again a boggling notion to most that struggle to conceive of even the smallest of them!

We are challenged with language that suggests that something can be infinite, and beyond the physical knowing of a finite (human) mind. Philosophers, spiritual mystics and mathematicians explore this realm with different degrees of success.

Today August 8, 2015 is considered auspicious as it numerologically is an 8 8 8 day.  The 8th day of the 8th month and the digits of 2015 add to the number 8. Why 8? The symbol for infinity sometimes called the lemniscate looks like an 8 on its side.  There is much to explore in this universe even with its puny finite set of particles, its dark matter and apparently growing dark energy.  But all of this pales compared to even the smallest of infinities.  And after all a googol is 10^100 a modest sized number with a name that exceeds the expected “size” of the universe, but it is truly small next to a googolplex defined to be the finite but quite a bit larger that is represented by 10^googol.  That is a 1 followed by 10^100 zeroes.

This always helps me to realize that the set of all things we don’t know will always massively exceed all that is known by all of the peoples ever living on this planet.  Small wonder that Spirit or God or any other mystical name for the unknowable is always beyond words, symbols, It is the More.  Larger than all of the infinities!

Changes of the moon remind me of the motion of days and weeks as the earth and companion sashay around the sun.  This next morning will witness the earth shading the bright solar glare softening the color of Luna.  Yet the moon is unchanged as it moves through the  darkness of space.  It is only my own perspective that daily and moment to moment shifts.  This lunar wisdom is grounding and awakening at the same time.  How many generations have looked to the heavens in wonder and awe as the shadow passes slowly across the face of the moon?  I can connect across time and space with this thought and with the stately power of this Full Hunters Moon.

I am so grateful for the dedication of Fred Espanek of NASA and MrEclipse.com for bringing his passion for the eclipse to the web.  It reminds me how amazing that our ancestors without computers, cameras and clocks calculated celestial calendars with such amazing precision.  No doubt entranced by the same changing moon.