My Father’s Telescope
When I was twelve years old, my father took me by one hand. In his other hand, he held a telescope. He led me to our backyard, where he had set up a tripod. As he positioned my eye to the scope, he asked, “Can you imagine what life on other planets might be like?” He was teaching me to wonder as much as he was teaching me astronomy. Telescopes allow us to see the unseen in stars and planets. Imagination is also a telescope for the unseen.
My father pointed out the shape of the Little Dipper with its handle ending in the North Star. Once you know north, you can navigate the globe. Thinking back to that moment, he was showing me how to zoom out to infinity, how to zoom out to the possibilities imagination brings, and how to zoom in to the clue that is always available—how to find north. You can be lost in the wonder of infinity and still find your place on Earth.
I followed his prompts to zoom out, to practice seeing things from above. When I was in high school, Sputnik went up. This Russian satellite was the first to enter space. It kicked off a space age, a scientific race, and a new worldview—seeing Earth from above. At that moment, I knew immediately what I wanted to be. It was not an astronaut. I wanted to be a “space lawyer”. I wanted to invent the terms that would bring agreement to the biosphere, as admiralty law did for the oceans. I imagined space law as the next iteration of the United Nations.
I did not become a space lawyer, but I still practiced zooming out. I joined NBC Network News in Washington, D.C., and made documentaries in Liberia, Abu Dhabi, Israel, Northern Ireland, Cuba, and other countries in tension and transition. Filming foreign cultures was another way to see the unseen, to experience the wild variety of ways to live in this world.
Just as the Big and Little Dipper use shape to key us to the stars, I started to think of shape as a way to understand human history. I remembered that when I filmed in tribal cultures, their shelters, social systems, and sacred sites were all circular, from round thatched huts to Stonehenge. When I filmed in cities, it seemed a ladder dominated their worldview, from pyramids to skyscrapers. Today, the network model masters our global lives, from technology to the map of our brain. These thoughts led to my book, The Telling Image: Shapes of Changing Times.
Throughout my life in Houston, I came to The Jung Center as the place to understand the shapes and patterns in human history and in my own life story. I took courses in mythology and fairy tales, studied my night dreams and daydreams, researched symbols and wrote poetry, and took courses in the history of human ideas.
The Jung Center is a place of learning, though not a school. It is a center that addresses spirit and mystery, though not a house of worship. It is a place of creative arts, though not a museum. The Jung Center offers us ways to see the unseen, to zoom out to the universe, and to zoom into ourselves.
Share
Recent Posts
