Beyond – Letter from the Editors

On Christmas Day 2021, NASA launched one of the most-anticipated space missions in recent memory, sending the James Webb Space Telescope on a month-long journey into orbit on the far side of the Moon. The months of calibration and testing before its first images arrived only heightened the anticipation of astronomers and skygazers around the world, but when Webb’s first images became public, in mid-July 2022, they astonished beyond all expectations.

Jaw-dropping beauty was revealed in the deepest corners of the cosmos, from the earliest phases of star formation in the Carina Nebula to galaxies bending and warping light from the unimaginably distant galaxies behind them (see webbtelescope.org). One jubilant NASA administrator captured the transcendent quality of Webb’s images when he claimed that, at NASA, they “take dreams and turn them into reality for the benefit of humanity.” 

The Webb Telescope is the culmination of decades of work, inter-agency collaboration, and almost $10 billion USD – an astounding expenditure of effort that testifies to human beings’ deep-seated desire to know what lies in the infinite expanse of the night sky. In one sense it is an astronomer’s dream turned into reality, but in another sense the dreams that it reveals have always been true: stars, clouds of gasses, and colours in all spectrums shining out the glory given them by their Creator. All we had to do was to look. That glorious reality was always there, beyond what we could see with the naked eye.

This is what Imprint also set out to do – on a smaller, personal scale – by adopting the theme of “Beyond.” The authors and artists published in this issue turn the optics of faith and imagination onto the world around us, discovering new visions of “beyond” at home, in our communities, and in our hearts. They practice arts of attentiveness and play that show us both beauty and heartbreak, and that catch glimpses of the spiritual reality of the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus gave his followers a warning wrapped in a promise about attempting this kind of mission. This paradox is recorded for us in Luke 17, where Jesus says: “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” The kingdom of God cannot be observed, he tells us, but look! It is here already. As you turn the pages of the Beyond issue of Imprint, I hope that you can see the traces of God’s presence, care, and creativity in the kingdom he is turning into reality around us.

Joel Faber, Lead Editor