85: Feeling connected to the whole universe and finding God there

Episode 85: Nell is another Catholic woman who is an astrophysicist. She shares how she experiences her faith, preferring evening Mass when the stars are out. While travelling to new places for study, she explores being welcomed and worshipping God in different contexts. Popping in to church to light a candle for someone is important to Nell – and Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral gets a special mention too.

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Transcript

You're listening to All Kinds of Catholic with me, Theresa Alessandro.  My conversations with different Catholics will give you glimpses into some of the ways we're living our faith today.  Pope Leo, quoting St Augustine, reminds us, Let us live well and the times will be good.  We are the times.  I hope you feel encouraged and affirmed and sometimes challenged as I am in these conversations.  Join our podcast community, get news and background information about the conversations and share your thoughts if you want to. You can get the newsletter and each episode straight to your inbox by going to allkindsofcatholic.substack.com and clicking on subscribe. It's free. That web address is in the episode notes too and I'd love you to draw closer to our community.  Thank you.  

Hello listeners. Just before we get into this week's conversation, I've been trailing for ages this in-person event and I'm going to start talking about it properly today. So we're having a gathering for the All Kinds of Catholic podcast community. I'll be there gathering with you listeners and also some of our previous podcast guests. It'll be lovely for us to be in the same space and talk to each other in person. I'm going to make a live episode of the podcast in conversation with a guest while we're there and there'll be a simple lunch. It's on Saturday the 21st of March and it's in Leicester. There's a link to where you can find out all the details and book a place, in the episode notes. You might not have realised, but there are people listening to this podcast in many different parts of the world. So an in-person gathering can't help but exclude some of our community. Sorry about that. But I'm really interested in bringing together people who can be there in Leicester on the 21st of March to talk about how you're finding the podcast. It's a chance for you to share your thoughts with me directly, which will be great. And while we're there together, we can talk about the value of an online gathering in the future. So I hope our whole community will be enriched by that in-person gathering, even for those listeners who aren't able to be there on the day. By train, Leicester is just an hour from London St Pancras station. It's an hour from Birmingham. It's an hour from Sheffield. It's an hour from Peterborough.  And the venue for the event is a very short walk from the station. And there's car parking too, if you're coming by car. And you can come to Leicester by bus or coach also. Go to the episode notes and find the link to the All Kinds of Catholic gathering. Sign up if you're able to or make a note in your diary and be thinking about it. It would be really lovely to meet you in person. This event is kindly supported by the Passionists of St. Patrick's Province Ireland and Britain and part of that funding provides a small pot of money towards travel costs.  So if you're a very committed listener who can't otherwise attend because of the cost, do get in touch. Okay, let's get on with today's conversation.

Listeners, you'll remember that we had an episode, a special episode last week for the Feast of the Epiphany. And so we're following up that episode with another Catholic woman in astronomy this week. And so I'm joined by Nell and we're going to have a really good conversation. So thanks ever so much for making some time to join me Nell.  

Thank you. It's lovely to meet you. 

Where should we start Nell? Like many guests, I know that you were born into a Catholic family and have always been a Catholic. I don't know whether your faith has always been important to you necessarily all that time, but tell us a little bit about your faith journey then and also your physical journey because you're in Liverpool now, but that's not where you grew up. 

So I grew up in Kent. I was born into a Catholic family. Went to church every Sunday. It was very, very important. My mother helped me -  she was the first Holy Communion teacher, so very embedded in the church. I was an altar server for about five or six years. So I had very strong Catholic values and still do. I had to move up to Liverpool for university because I really liked the astrophysics course here, but I did carry on my faith in Liverpool. I kind of branched out a bit. I went to Penny Lane St Barnabas Church and joined a Christian youth group, and that was really interesting for me. And then I travelled up to Glasgow for my Masters and continued learning about my faith there. So I think I've always had a very deep rooted sense of spirituality and I'm happy that I've managed to take on the journey further in each place that I've travelled to.

I'm hearing a kind of openness in you already, you know, that you have your own faith, but actually you're open to other experiences. 

Yes, definitely. I think that being a Catholic, you're, you know, especially growing up as a Catholic, you have this very rigid sense of worship.  And when I came to Liverpool, I really wanted to experience different forms of worship. So I joined the Christian Youth Group and learned a lot of different ways of worship. It was a very relaxed church.  I learned things that really baffled me, like people were eating in the church and people were sitting on the floor in the church and I was like, I didn't know we were allowed to do this. It was really interesting for me to have that experience and then to also come back to Kent and be involved in Catholic worship again. And I really think it gave me a sense of security that I do like Catholic worship. I like the rigid structure. I like the Mass. But also it made me more interested to learn about different forms of worship. So when I went up to Glasgow for my Masters, I made friends with some Hindu girls and they said to me, you can't come to the Hindu temple, but you can come to the Sikh temple.  And in the Sikh temple, they have a worship form called the Gurdwara. I might be pronouncing that wrong, but I think I'm almost there. And you go and you pray in the prayer room and then you go down and you eat communally. And the Sikhs provide this for everyone. You don't have to be of the Sikh religion. You can be any religion or no religion at all. It's just meant to be a safe place for people to come and receive free food. And I loved it. I really, really, really loved it. I think it opened my mind to how different people worship and communicate through their religion and have that sense of community. And I also found it in the Church of Scotland. There was a church on my university campus that I went to.

And I was always very welcome to every form of different place of worship that I visited. 

Thank you, Nell. That’s so interesting.  I'm based here in Leicester, which is well known for being multicultural. There's a big Sikh community here. And, you know, I'm well aware that the Sikh community are very welcoming and have a huge tradition of hospitality that, as you say, people are welcome to go and share in eating together there. And so it's really interesting to hear from someone who's been and done that and how you found that and what a positive experience that was. I think sometimes we can imagine that our own experience, we think of hospitality also in the Catholic faith, don’t we? And we can imagine that we're the ones who do that and other people don't know about it. So it's really useful to find really positive, welcoming experiences in other faiths. And like you say, it doesn't take us away from our own faith, but it  gives us a kind of breadth to our understanding of where we are, I suppose. 

Yeah, definitely.

So I'm really interested in the fact that the women that I spoke to last week for the epiphany episode, all spoke about having broad interests as well, they hadn't just focused on astronomy, but even from childhood they were aware of having lots of interests. I'm hearing the same in you. That's really interesting that you too have, as I say, this openness, this interest in the world around you, not just in what's going on above our heads in space. So tell us a bit about then how you found the episode. I know you caught up with what last week's guests had to say. How did it strike you? What resonated for you?  

Yeah, I think that I really align myself with those women, not just from the fact that I'm also a Catholic and also an astrophysicist, but a lot of the themes of conversation I really agreed with, you know, separating religion from  science, but also being able to agree with both at the same time. I really agree with that. I think that it's really good that this conversation is happening because in the past and still to this day, some people can really, you know, degrade it and diminish it. And I don't think that's the right approach. And I also really learned a lot from the women from Jacqueline and Claudia and Laura, I never knew that there were craters on the moon named after Jesuits. And I knew about famous astronomers who have also been Catholic priests. And I know how much the Catholic Church has donated financially and supported socially, astrophysics in the past, but it was really great to hear more of those facts and themes come to light through the episode. I also identified with being a woman in the Catholic Church. There is a really strong place for us and I've never felt like I was discriminated or felt lesser. I’ve always felt very welcome in the church - and it's something that I really struggle to convey to others when they question me on my religion, because I've never felt that I questioned my religion, even though, you know, I've said that I've experienced lots of different forms of worship. That was more, I think, me trying to explore and learn about others and about myself, and less about me questioning my own religious values. So yeah, I think it's really interesting when you have to try and defend yourself to people. And they kind of spoke about that a little bit in the episode and about how you can really agree that astrophysics and science can still make sense in the context of being religious. 

And what about, we spoke a little bit in the episode last week about, I suppose, something about the enormity of space and the things we don't know. How do you experience astrophysics and does it make you look up at the sky differently? Are you very aware of things that you don't know as much as things that you're learning?  

Definitely, definitely. I think because I'm very comfortable with the sense of the unknown, as many religious people are, it almost makes it a bit easier to learn about because there is so much that we don't know, especially doing my PhD and studying things that we currently don't know and trying to solve them. So it gives me a sense of comfort that I'm already familiar with the unknown. I'm not afraid of it and I can deal with it. In terms of being kind of connected to religion, when I look at the stars, it's just been Christmas and I love Midnight Mass. I love going to Mass in the evenings. I feel very connected spiritually to God when we're under the light of the stars. I love the Easter Vigil. So I think those things are really core for me and where I can draw my love for the stars into my religion. 

I'm reminded that having made that episode last week, we had a full moon the other night here that was really clear. 

The wolf moon.  

And I was kind of looking at it in a new way because I was thinking about my guests and how they understand much more about what they're seeing, I suppose. But there's a sense in which the awe of what there is in the universe just came through to me more clearly, I think, from having had a conversation with other Catholic people about it. 

Definitely. And when you can look at the stars and see the beauty of it, it just reminds us how God has created this beautiful universe. And that's really prominent for me when I look at the stars. I just see all of the beauty in it. I study things which are outside of our galaxy and so they're very, very unknown. But it's a very exciting feeling for me. It doesn't fill me with dread. 

That feels, to me, that sounds so tenuous to be, you know, examining something that is so far away that we maybe only understand by glimpses on telescope images,  or mathematical formulas that tell us something must be so. That seems so tenuous and yet I don't know whether that gives you a sense that God really is everywhere, that you can find so far away something that still we can in some way understand as human beings created by God. 

Yeah, definitely. I think it really emphasises how God is all around us, even so far away. The events that I'm studying, I still feel very intrigued by them and connected to them and want to know more about them. I can go into what I study specifically. It's quite a weird field. I don't know if any of the other women study it. I know Claudia, she studies cosmology and what I do is kind of similar. So I study the collisions between black holes and neutron stars, so stars at the end of their lives, and they produce these massive explosions, which are very awesome to look at and to observe. And as you say, they can only be observed by space telescopes. So yeah, very connected to the universe.  

Those explosions that you're looking at.  Clearly I don't know anything about astrophysics, but I'm just trying to grasp at something. Are those explosions that you're looking at on a space telescope, are they in the past? Are you looking at something that happened a long time ago? Because there's also, Claudia spoke a little bit about time scales - there's also this sense of an enormous timeframe compared with our own lifespan, for example.

Yes, exactly. So I am looking in the past, but because the explosions, they're the brightest explosions in the universe. And so we're able to see them with our telescopes and pinpoint them. But it's the full duration, they can last from seconds to years.  So I think in that sense, time scale is really important to see how they can behave over time and increase and decrease gradually and interact with other matter in the universe and that's what I'm studying. 

Okay, well thank you. Thank you for making that make some sense for us, for those of us who don't know about these things. And I'm just thinking on a much more practical level, how do you manage your faith and the practice of your faith when you've got obviously work, study. Because I think studying at the level that you are at, can fill your head, can't it? I wonder whether it's harder to step back and find time for prayer when you have so much work to do.

Yeah, I think it's really interesting because when I was preparing for this, I was thinking, you know, what are the ties and the similarities? And I really do find a sense of calm escape in both my work and also in prayer. I think it's one of the only times, you know, in both situations where my brain can really focus on one thing. And I didn't really realise that in terms of religion, probably until when I was in my late teens, maybe like 16, 17, that I could really go to church and just disconnect from everything else and focus on God and focus on worship. And now I find the same in my work when I'm, you know, really focused on a problem and I can just disconnect from everything else, from all the thoughts in my brain. So yeah, I think I kind of parallel the two in that way. 

And do you, I don't want to put you - maybe I'm projecting my own foibles onto you - but when there's a lot to do, it's easy to deprioritise time for prayer, is what I'm trying to say. So is it something that you have to work at making time to continue to connect with God in your prayer life when there are deadlines and huge pieces of work to complete? 

Definitely. I think that especially not being where I've come from in my home anymore and being away from my local parish, it was hard initially when I moved up to Liverpool and also when I went to Glasgow. To try and find time to go to church, to try and find time to pray.  And that’s part of the reason honestly why I had those experiences with the Sikh temple, because my Hindu friends were like, Well, we're really stressed with exams, so come and pray with us. And I just said, Okay, because I would prefer to be in company in the church. So yeah, I do find it hard. And I think it's a constant challenge and thing to work at and that we all have to work at. But I find it a lot easier, I think, when I go back home and I'm with my family in my local parish. We're very close to our priest. My family is still very deep rooted in the church. So I remain in contact with them and also with the people in Liverpool. I've managed to find connections in different churches. But yes, it's always a challenge and something I'm working at. 

Okay. Well, thank you for your honesty. And then I think it would be really nice to get some sort of flavour of what your faith looks like. You've explained a little bit about being able to be in church and just disconnect from  the cares of the world. But what about, what are the kind of things that nourish your faith particularly?  Are there particular prayers, ways of celebrating Mass that speak to you? 

Yeah, as I said, I think that I feel the most spiritual in the evenings. So I connect with God a lot more through Masses that are in the evening. So I would prefer to go to a Mass at night than to a Mass maybe during the daytime. But yeah, I think that there's lots of forms of worship, honestly. At Penny Lane, there's lots of singing of hymns, and I really love doing that. I love silent prayer, my own prayer, my personal reflections. And I think praying for loved ones, going into a cathedral or a church, lighting a candle for people, for people who I know, for people who I don't know. I find that there's lots of different ways that you can express your worship, and it doesn't just have to be in the Mass time. 

Thank you, Nell. And in the things that you've chosen to study and the places that you've travelled to do those studies, do you feel a sense of God leading you to those places and to this  area of study? Do you feel a sense of God working in your life and directing you and is that something you pray about? 

Yeah, definitely. I think my prayers -  it's interesting, when I came to Liverpool, Liverpool is a very Catholic place. It's really deep rooted in Catholicism. A church on every corner. And I love that. I really love, you know, being able to experience that and being in a very religious place. And I definitely think that God sent me here for a reason. It's the reason that I've been able to carry on as an astrophysicist to get my PhD. You know, I wouldn't be back here if that hadn't have happened. And I think that going to Glasgow was kind of the opposite because it's not a very Catholic place. It's not very rooted in Catholicism in the same way that Liverpool is. And I think that was a really interesting experience for me, having to navigate that journey of where do I fit in as a Catholic? Where do I fit in here? But yeah, I think that it's interesting to try and pinpoint how God has sent me to different places and how it influences my work. I think I pray more for others than for myself, honestly. I understand that it's important to have God guiding me on my journey, but I feel it important to pray for the people around me, especially if there's people that are unwell. I think that that's, that's a more important thing for me to do. 

Oh, you sound like a good friend to have Nell.  You're going to be praying for people when they're unwell and things. That's, that's wonderful. So we've brought ourselves up to the present with your studying astrophysics and how you came to be there in Liverpool. And so are you able to look ahead? I think sometimes when you're doing a huge piece of work like a PhD, maybe you can't see beyond the end point of the PhD, but are you able to look ahead and think, have some sort of idea of how you think your life might go after that. What you'd like to do and how your faith might fit into that? 

I really am content being in Liverpool. I'm here for the next three years. I definitely intend to still be worshipping and practising my worship in that time. The Metropolitan Cathedral, which is in Liverpool, is the biggest Catholic cathedral and I'll definitely be going there a lot. It’s where I graduated as well which was amazing. It was a really incredible experience to do that. And after I finish my PhD I really would like to travel to more places and experience more of Catholicism. I've been to Spain and I really love going to the Spanish churches and cathedrals where there are whole Catholic Masses in Latin. That is one of my favourite things ever. I've been there during Easter once and it was just incredible. I'd recommend it to everyone. So yeah, I think a lot of travelling and exploring other forms of worship as I have currently been doing but staying firm in my Catholic beliefs. 

Your openness to experiences is coming through again there. That's great. I wonder if we might just finish, just because you mentioned Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and lots of listeners may be familiar with it or be able to have a little look afterwards. Tell us a bit about what it's like going to Mass there at night then. Have you done that? Have you been to Mass at night as you prefer the evenings? What is that building like at night?  

Gosh, it's incredible. I would encourage everyone to visit it because it's really phenomenal. The stained glass is gorgeous and when the sun comes in, it's just amazing. So it's a circular cathedral and with the altar in the middle of it. I just think that you can't really experience anything similar to it. We've got the Anglican cathedral, which is another, the second Liverpool cathedral. And that is also incredible. But I think the Metropolitan cathedral -  it has a crypt as well, which is really impressive. It offers a very diverse perspective on a Mass. And I always feel very welcome there. So I'd encourage everybody to definitely visit it. 

Okay. That's great. Thank you ever so much, Nell. I'm so glad you've made some time out of your PhD to join us today. It's been really lovely to hear from you and to hear your openness to new experiences and what you think about when you're looking up at the heavens. I'm really interested in you preferring Mass in the evening and at night actually. That's something I'm going to think about differently because I usually find I'm a bit more sleepy at those times.  But I'm going to think about that differently knowing that that's something that really speaks to you. And I hope listeners have found something in this conversation, I'm sure they will have, to resonate with them and give them new things to think about. So thanks ever so much for making some time today. Thank you. 

Thank you, Theresa.  

Thanks so much for joining me on All Kinds of Catholic this time. I hope today's conversation has resonated with you.  A new episode is released each Wednesday and you can follow All Kinds of Catholic on the usual podcast platforms,  rate and review to help others find it.  You can also follow us on social media @kindsofCatholic and remember if you connect with us on Substack you can comment on episodes and share your thoughts and be part of the dialogue there. Until the next time.