“I once thought that if I could ask God one question, I would ask how the universe began, because once I knew that, all the rest is simply equations. But as I got older I became less concerned with how the universe began. Rather, I would want to know why he started the universe. For once I knew that answer, then I would know the purpose of my own life.”– Albert Einstein

The world’s foremost scientist of the 20th century was not against religious thought, per se, because if anything, focusing on the universe as a whole, and what makes it work, can’t help but bring one into the domain of metaphysics, areas beyond the range of our current mental capacities to reckon with.

When I was in high school in Santa Barbara, California, U.S. astronauts were making their first forays into space, following on the heels of the Soviets’ Yuri Gargarin’s first ever trip into space in 1961. Gagarin, in keeping with Soviet materialistic convictions, was famous for having said he made it into space but saw no evidence of God there.

As the editor of my high school newspaper then, a couple other high school students and I were given the honor of being driven up to Vandenberg Air Force base to attend a press conference by the American astronauts following their flight only a month or two after Gagarin. My memory is fuzzy and I honestly can’t recall who the astronauts were, there were two of them, and it’s likely that one was Alan Shepard. 

At any rate, after their presentation and after taking questions from the press, the moderator wrapped up the program by asking first if any of us students wanted to ask a question. Well, I had a question that I had formulated in my head during the course of the press conference, but when asked kept quiet and missed the opportunity, for better or worse.

 It was simply, “Though Gagarin saw no evidence of God up there, did you?” I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d raised my hand and asked that. I imagine that it and the astronauts’ answer would have made the news. I imagine a bunch of religious folks would have been all over me. I was not religious in any formal sense at the time, but, who knows, I might have become a national celebrity, at least for 15 minutes or so.

(What I’ve learned about my journalistic profession over the years is that it’s the ability to ask the right questions that’s key).

So, I’ve been left to wonder ever since. So also, I have wondered what the astronauts would have replied. They might have responded in the spirit of Einstein’s well known sentiments on the subject. That is, that the majesty of creation, of the universe itself, is a testament to something greater than we even know how to express or think about right now.

Indeed, with all the amazing revelations about our universe that are now being exhibited by the work of the magnificent James Webb Space Telescope, firing images at us from a position a million miles in space and showing us what things were like back 13 billion light years or so and vexing even the best of scientific minds with mind-boggling realities, such as the indisputable evidence of so-called “quantum entanglement.”

“Quantum entanglement” is more than just a theory, it’s a proven fact, but it is so intriguing that Einstein, himself, famously called it “spooky action at a distance.” It’s the fact that two somehow interconnected particles can “communicate” faster than the speed of light from the far ends of the universe such that when one moves one way, the other moves in concert with it. What does that say about all of reality, one may ask? 

These beg bigger questions than what the setback on an accessory dwelling unit should be, or in fact about much of what typically fills our consciousness day in and day out.

Since we are all made of stardust, truly, let our minds soar to a place where foul piglets of the sordid and mundane, like Trump, carry no weight.