This is a talking point published in the Hereford Times on October 24. 

Very Rev Sarah Brown, Dean of Hereford

I DON’T know what crossover there is between readers of the Hereford Times and the 7,000 people who travelled over hill and vale, through flood and storm, and leaf-strewn city streets to come to the Space light show at the cathedral last week.

It was fascinating to see the cathedral in a different light as we closed the gap between business as usual as a place of worship, heritage and most excellent cake and ‘Space, the Final Frontier!’

I wonder what an alien arriving from another planet would make of us. What strange and apparently contradictory things happen in this place! Spaceships and plainchant, incense and virtual reality, solemn preachers and dancing toddlers, holy altars illuminated by images of spacecraft and swirling galaxies. Alpha to Omega and everything in between. What can it mean? Houston, do we have a problem? Has the Church lost the plot?

A cathedral is first and foremost a centre of Christian worship. It is also a heritage site and an icon for this city.

It is a place of sanctuary and peace, story and prayer, of education and exploration and a place for the whole community to know themselves welcome in Christ’s name whether they come in faith or not.

And here we are branching out with a range of public events, some of which bring great and unexpected joy to many people.

Space certainly fell into this category. But events like this cannot overshadow the cathedral’s purpose, which is to stand symbolically between earth and heaven, pointing at the God of time and space and what it means to be human in the light of his love shown in Jesus Christ.

Faith asks big questions about human existence. So does science. The questions are framed differently and the data is different but we are all after the same thing really.

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What are your thoughts?

You can send a letter to the editor to have your say by clicking here.

Letters should not exceed 250 words and local issues take precedence.

And one worldview alone is likely to be only part of the whole story of humanity and our place in creation. It isn’t a competition. I think that God is the ultimate scientist! 

If you came to the light show, thank you for coming. I hope that from now when you walk past your beautiful cathedral which has kept the faith in Hereford for almost 1,350 years you will be reminded of a bigger conversation. About God and humankind; science and faith; creation and the universe. About people of faith who are also physicists, cosmologists and astronomers and about scientists who are also committed Christians. There is so much to explore.

Let us boldly go…