Blue is the Sky: Why?

Remains of small stone chapel 

on St Cuthbert’s Island, Lindisfarne

Blue is the Sky: Why?

Life sustaining rays of the sun

derive from the vastness of space, a clear white;

then molecules struck in the earth’s gaseous layers

scatter the rainbow spectrum of light.

Short-wavelength blue is scattered most strongly,

giving the sky its dominant hue:

our eyes reinforce this perception by having

receptors fine-tuned to prioritise blue.

Orange and red with their much longer wavelengths

must wait till the sunset or sunrise to glow,

they need deeper layers of air, then they scatter

these glorious hues as the sun travels low.

Life sustaining rays of the Saviour

bring light to the world from the darkness of sin;

whilst blue of the sky and golds of the days’ ends

are gifts of the cosmos created by Him.

Original Comments on day of posting (21st June 2015)

For the past few days we have been joining in fellowship each morning in the excellent worship and meeting space that has been created in the former URC (United Reform Church) on Holy Island/ Lindisfarne in Northumbria (UK). The former church is now known as The St Cuthbert Centre.  Lindisfarne is the island inhabited in the seventh century by monks from the mission on Iona, another island in the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.  These islands were cradles of Christianity in that century. The two most well-known members of the Lindisfarne Community of that time are St Aidan and St Cuthbert.

Every other morning we used a short order of service which included a responsive thanksgiving; short sentences read by one of us, to which everyone else responded ‘We give thanks’. Although we changed our seats within the circle, on every day that we used the order, I found myself reading the same bidding ‘For the illusion of blue sky. (‘We give thanks’).

Understandably this phrase provoked comment on several  of those occasions and I went away pondering it. There was a sense that it might be encouraging us to think of the science behind the blessing of a blue sky.

In our last couple of days on the island, I began to think of this as an invitation to write a short poem on this theme, for it would be entirely in line with one of the main ideas behind this blog – the weaving together of science and faith. I hope you might enjoy the result and that the poem will resonate with others who have joined in those short services and find their way to this post.

And - thank you Rachel for your ministry in that place. May it bear much fruit.

Another faith and science poem written on Lindisfarne can be found at I Imagine the God who Created the Cosmos.

Science of this poem checked out with the explanation for the blue of the sky on NASA’s website.