Evolution happens when there is a problem to be overcome. Problems force us to think outside the box and adapt to often unwelcome circumstances. We might well have pondered theoretically some of the ways by which humanity might be challenged into a new awareness – perhaps in a ‘change or die’ situation such as climate change – but very few of us could have predicted what actually happened in 2020.

There seems to be no way for new beginnings to appear until and unless the old structures collapse. The pandemic has effectively de-constructed many of our assumptions and expectations and left us dismayed to see how our carefully engineered control of our world could so suddenly and dramatically unravel before our eyes, through the force majeure of a tiny virus.  Yet in the heart of the breakdown, the seeds of the breakthrough are silently gestating in the dark. Scientists of whom we have never heard, come quietly out of their laboratories to offer tentative new solutions. Neighbours to whom we have hardly spoken, call to ask if we need any help. Teachers find ways of bringing the classroom to the kitchen table, and people who barely knew how to send an email learn to develop sophisticated online learning and support tools. So what is going on in the beating heart of creation, and in the depths of the human spirit in these turbulently creative times?

I began to formulate my thoughts on these conversations on December 21^st 2020, the winter solstice, and the rare conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. When two planets pass unusually close to each other, they cause what appears to be an especially bright star to rise in the night sky. This phenomenon has become known as ‘the Star of Bethlehem’, reflecting the possibility that such a planetary conjunction occurred around the timeframe of Jesus’ birth and could perhaps have led to the account of the guiding star in Matthew’s gospel.Whatever the science behind the story, what fascinates me is the word ‘conjunction’. What kinds of unlikely conjunction might be happening in our times? Perhaps the conjunction of breakdown and breakthrough, of heart-break and heart-birth, of the end of who we thought we were and the beginning of all we can become? During these liminal times when our human night seems at its darkest, beset by gross injustice, pandemic, conflict and climate breakdown, radical change walks among us, dressed as crisis. Is this perhaps the very moment when the guiding star is appearing, not just in the heavens, but on planet Earth, breaking and re-shaping our own story and our Earth-story?