Pluto and Our Own Planetary Journey

The small, icy object was laughing with glee.  A series of mistakes by fallible beings from far away had resulted in this object’s admittance into an elite club.  This hunk of ice didn’t do anything to merit this supposed honor, and nothing changed for it now, but—having been named Pluto and declared a planet—it played along.  “Why bother speaking up and pointing out the errors?” Pluto thought.  “I’ll enjoy this ride for as long as I can.  Let’s see what I can get away with.” 

“Hey, what are you doing cutting off Neptune, you derelict?!” cried the indignant planet Earth at the puny upstart that had broken an unwritten planetary rule and crossed a neighbor’s orbit.  “Stay in your own lane!”

But Pluto was just doing what it had always been doing, following the course God had set out for it.

Before too long (76 years), investigators on the meddling planet Earth had identified the problems with the cold object—its intrusion into another planet’s air-space, its presumptuousness at trying to be considered in the same league with objects many, many times its size—and they questioned Pluto’s right to the prestigious classification it had been enjoying.  A small group of sympathizers arose on this very divisive third planet from the Sun and cried out self-righteously, “No!  You can’t do this to Pluto!  Do it a favor, cut it a break.  So what if it doesn’t meet your new criteria.  This isn’t fair.”  Yet, upon further investigation, it was determined that many of these Earthlings crying foul were not moved by empathy, but were rather concerned about how all of this change was going to affect them.  It wasn’t “fair” that they were going to have to change their posters and models, that they were going to have to “re-teach” science.  Others maintained a selfless devotion to their favorite, cute, little planet and sported pins that said “I love Pluto.”  They identified with the planet’s irregular traits, its underdog status as the small, awkward kid way on the fringe of the solar system.  And others were more rational and detached in their analysis, pointing out that no emotional or moral valence should accompany the definition of a planet.  “This is science,” they explained, “cold and detached and not always fitting into neat boxes the way we’d like.  Just like Pluto, in fact.”  So, maybe the manner in which we demoted this sphere from the status of planet leaves us having much more in common with it than we thought.  “But, I don’t want to be cold and distant like Pluto,” others countered.  “I want to be mercurial, like the planet near the Sun—warm and close.  I want to be inclusive and forgiving.  So what if Pluto doesn’t stand out in size in its neighborhood, if it crossed over into Neptune’s orbit, if it’s a lot smaller than we originally assumed?  Can’t we still consider it a planet—just for old times’ sake?!”  In the end, it was a democratic vote that sealed Pluto’s fate, even though not a thing about this large ice cube has actually changed.

What do we learn from all this?  As I reflected on this scientific news, wondering if we could apply it to our spiritual lives, I arrived at a core, underlying message that not only explains why this issue aroused so much interest from non-scientists, but that also tells us much about who we really are.  The message is this:  We are planets.  Each one of us.  We are distinct and unique entities engaged in a never-ending journey of turning.  We go round and round, attracted by the pull of something greater, something with so much more energy than we have that we find ourselves building our lives around it.  We are always moving in relation to it, yet are forced to remain at a nonnegotiable distance, at least in the visible short-term. … Although our worlds seem pretty stormy when we examine them up close, from afar it appears that we function with relative regularity and constancy.  We build lives filled with orderly, comforting routines.  On one hand, change seems difficult.  We like maintaining a rather predictable existence.  On the other hand, we realize that, like it or not, we are constantly evolving.  We don’t remain the way we were long ago, but rather continue on our journey of growth and discovery.  We are in motion.  We might wonder sometimes—or perhaps often—if we are ever really getting anywhere, but the fact remains that we are always moving—sometimes only in ways that we can perceive from a distance.  Our journey involves a daily transformation that’s so easy to overlook.  Daily, like the earth on which we live, we turn and return.  We make t’shuvah, the act of returning. 

We see this cycle, this turning, with the daily rising and setting of the sun.  But that language suggests what our ancestors actually believed, that the Earth was fixed, in relation to a moving sun, rather than the opposite.  Perspective can be deceiving.  It’s so easy to focus on the movement—or supposed movement—of others, and forget or lose sight of the changes going on within ourselves.  The time then comes to look inward—to become conscious of, and to take responsibility for, personal change.  We need to become the self-conscious planet, embracing the reality of our place and our movement in the universe.  Now is that time.  This is the moment for us to see ourselves as we really are. 

To gain this proper perspective of what’s happening within us, we need to step back—we need to see the big picture.  Who are we really in relation to everything and everyone else?  And from this new perspective comes another “revolution,” a different kind of turning—the turning upside down of our outlook on ourselves in the cosmic order.  We reenact on the personal level what the scientific revolution brought about in regard to our understanding of Earth—that we are a planet.  The great truth is unveiled: The universe does not revolve around us.  We are not the center of all Creation, like the mythical Zion I spoke about last week.  To go from being the point of universal convergence—the Tzion, Zion, the marked spot—to being a mere traveler, making the same basic trek as countless others beings, is a revolutionary transformation.  Tomorrow, in our N’ilah prayers, in a moment of great humility, we will declare, “What are we?  What is the value of our lives?  Before you, God, the mighty are as nothing, the famous as if they had never been; the wise are without wisdom, the clever without reason.  For most of their deeds are worthless, and their days are like a breath.”

The fasting we engage in this Yom Kippur reinforces for us this humility.  We remember the truth that our lives are not a mere selfish pursuit for physical satisfaction and satiation.  Rather, we’re on a spiritual journey that requires that we constantly evaluate our path, assess where we’re going, and no matter what, continue to move.  Yes, we might have our own sphere of influence.  We might have our own satellites.  We might be exerting an attraction on others who consider us their center; but in the big picture we are a part of a dance of trillions, each of us in motion—each one engaged in its own orbit but around a common center much greater than ourselves.  And so, we identify with the community of planets not only because we live on one of them, but because we actually are our own community of planets.

If the celestial planets are revolving around the sun, then what are we, as spiritual travelers, revolving around?  What is the gravitational power at the center of the circle we draw with our life’s travels, the point that pulls us into motion but that we can’t reach or touch?  The religious answer is that—however we understand that center—that’s what we call God.  Each of us needs to identify that center for ourselves—the organizing principles that enable us to keep moving, the core ideals that keep us striving and growing and in pursuit of something good and meaningful.  When we lose sight of the center, we lose our footing, we stumble; we stray in our orbits.  We become like Pluto, a seemingly wayward object exhibiting irregular motion.  And so, we identify with that little chunk of ice.  We find ourselves, like this dwarf-planet, terribly distanced from that warm and illuminating center, terribly cold, and seemingly lost.  How many of us are just spinning, with no understanding of what is motivating us, what is pulling us, what is the energy that has its hold on us?  Are we allowing for a relationship with that power, or are we kicking and screaming as we move along?  If the latter, then we might be upsetting—in our spiritual system—that balance that is so orderly in the planetary march of the solar system.  We need to realign ourselves with our center, come back from being Pluto to being Earth, positioned in just the right manner so as to promote the flourishing of life.

Part of that dynamic life we want to promote, part of that constant movement, is our ongoing intellectual development, especially in regard to the sciences.  We search for answers, yet come to understand and appreciate how deeply and wonderfully complex and mysterious the universe is.  Copernicus and Galileo taught us that we need to adapt to an ever-changing, evolving, and complex world.  We need to think.  We need to allow intelligent discussion and analysis to take us out of our comfort zone.  We need to reevaluate how we relate with the ideas and concepts that help bring a sense of meaning and purpose to our lives.  This is what the changed definitions of a planet and Pluto’s “fate” in that discussion represents.  It’s about being honest with what we observe to be reality.  We might not always like the outcome, but without a rigorously honest assessment and articulation of reality, we risk falling out of orbit, we risk going astray.  Astronomers claimed that their predecessors made a mistake when they deemed Pluto a planet in the 1930s.  Geoff Marcy, a scientist who has led the discovery of more planets around other stars than anyone, put it quite simply.  He said that, “Scientists should show that they can admit mistakes and rectify them.”  And so we see in the Pluto story a model of t’shuvah, of recognizing human fallibility, the need to correct it, and the responsible act of following through.

Obviously, we also need to enact these principles in our daily lives—not just in science or other academic disciplines.  We need to be able to bring this same honesty and openness to adaptation and change when it comes to our personal relationships and life choices.  Where have we gone wrong?  We can’t stay in the same place.  When we stagnate, in our relationships with our fellow human beings, with God, with our relationship to Jewish life, or with ourselves—our ideas, our emotional development, our souls—then it as if our world has stopped turning; we have stopped.  And like the nightmarish title, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” suggests, the consequences of such immobility could be tragically devastating.  We need to recognize change and respond to it.  We need to see and understand the consequences of certain actions—those committed by us and those of others.  We need to live in the present and recognize that when the facts of our experience—with certain relationships, certain pursuits—are telling us a certain story, we can’t run from that story.  As thinking scientists or scholars and as feeling human beings, we need to face with responsibility and maturity the realities we discover in our ever-unfolding lives. 

The traditional emphasis of the Days of Awe is that, in reevaluating and adjusting to the realities of our lives and taking responsibility for them, we need to realign ourselves, like planets, with our spiritual center.  The solar metaphor is helpful here, and not just because of what it offers visually, but also because of what the sun represents emotionally.  For many throughout time, a spiritual center has been the source of nourishing light and warmth.  Even though they didn’t necessarily have their astronomy correct, the ancients were on track spiritually by emphasizing the divine-like qualities that existed within the sun: the constant, radiant source of light and warmth—and thus of life, wisdom, enlightenment—the most powerful gravitational force in our midst.  No wonder that the closest the pagans got to something resembling monotheism was worship of the sun as the premier deity.  We even see some faint remnants of this sun-worship in our own prayers, transformed to focus on an all-powerful God that exists beyond any one aspect of Creation.  In the morning ‎yotzer prayer, we praise God for the creation of light as we behold the sun’s light with a new day—and we also express the hope that God shine a new light on Zion.  We unify the source of physical light with the source of spiritual light—the sun (and other lights in the sky) are but one example in God’s infinite display of might. 

The prayer goes even further.  In the middle of it, there is a seemingly bizarre shift from a celebration of light in nature to a spiritual vision of angels encircling the Divine throne and singing praises on high.  Here’s the link:  We first identify the physical lights, the luminaries—m’orot (sun, moon, planets, and stars)—as testaments to God’s glory: Natan s’vivot uzo (God has placed them in a circle around God’s strength).  We say that they declare God’s praises.  M’orei or she’asita (the luminaries you have made) y’fa’arucha sela (they glorify you).  Essentially, we recognize that light-bearing objects are engaged in an orbit—but around God!  Regardless of the physical reality—that the planets, the physical satellites, are satellites around the Earth, the sun, or some other physical object—they are also revolving around a spiritual center that transcends the entire physical realm.  This celestial dance we observe in the physical sky—and which we know that we, on planet Earth, are a part of—is all a tribute to a non-physical power which all these objects are devotedly serving.  Enter the angels.  The prayer shifts almost imperceptibly from discussing the sun and moon that rise and set in their proper times to mentioning the “heavenly host”—s’rafim, v’ofanim, v’chayot hakodesh.  This shift from physical to spiritual allegiance turns us to Isaiah’s prophetic vision of dedicated, constant, angelic beings that repeatedly declare, “Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh (Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts).”  These angels are, essentially, a religious stand-in for the planets.

Interestingly, this angel-planet connection exists in the mystical Jewish tradition and even moreso in other religions, including astrology.  It was through the planets, whose paths and movements were governed by angels, that angels had influence in our world.  The planets were God’s intermediaries.  They determined or foretold of human beings’ fate, while at the same time making their movements through the sky in the honorable service of God.  Their very actions were a tribute to God’s greatness.

Now, if we are planets—or can see them in their constancy as a model for our behavior—then so, too, do we seek to emulate the angels.  Especially on Yom Kippur.  Today, we are angels.  We shift ourselves from the physical concerns of food, comfortable clothing, physical cleanliness—and focus on spiritual purity.  We wear all white.  And we declare aloud “Baruch shem k’vod…” the words we usually say silently after the Sh’ma because they are reserved for the angels, who in their spiritual purity, declare God’s holiness in heaven.  Tonight and tomorrow, we say these words.  For this one day, we are angels as well as planets.

Let’s embrace this identity as well-aligned travelers, orbiting consistently yet always in motion, in relation to a spiritual center.  We’re part of a fellowship of planets.  Now, science needs rules and definitions for determining who’s in and who’s out.  In science, labels matter.  On the human level, we all belong.  No one can say, “You’re not an esteemed traveler who has unique worth in your journey of Divine praise.”  Pluto never had the same qualities that the eight planets have.  Do we ever feel this way about ourselves?  That we don’t belong?  That we’re off on the sidelines—or should be—because we’re inherently unlike the rest of the travelers?  Sometimes we allow ourselves to think this way because of our own mistakes; sometimes it is the cruelty of others who shun us and drive us into the cold, dark outer-reaches of Plutonian loneliness and despair.  We’re so nervous about being judged, but labels don’t affect who we are at our core and they don’t denote essential worth.  God knows our essential worth.  That icy rock way off at the edge of the solar system is still doing what it’s always been doing, regardless of its label.   It might have a different relationship to the sun than the planets do, but it still has an authentic relationship with God.  As do we, if we choose to embrace it and work on it.  We know there are things we need to change.  The miracle of Yom Kippur is that we know that God will pull us back into our rightful planetary orbit, if we are open to that realignment, if we do the work to repel the forces that detract us from our proper gravitational pull.  We will never be banished from the community of sacred voyagers.  Only our own lack of awareness of the center will throw us off.  Today is the time to reestablish that connection to the center, to look inside ourselves, find the angel within, and make the changes necessary to return—to make t’shuvah— back to our proper orbit.  May we all journey in safety, happiness, and peace.