Ryan Tubridy sits in

Pause For Thought

With Rev Ruth Scott, an Anglican vicar in Richmond.

As schools shut for the summer lots of school leavers give thank you cards and gifts to favourite teachers who’ve inspired them. I’m reminded of Mr Larcombe, my Chemistry teacher. I was hopeless at science but Mr Larcombe helped me to pull through. He was a lovely human being – the kind who makes people feel they’re something rather than nothing. He used simple pictures to help me understand scientific theories I struggled to grasp. I wonder how he’d describe to students as scientifically inept as me, the Higgs boson that’s been hitting the headlines. As I understand it when the invisible Higgs field was activated at the time of the Big Bang, the Higgs bosons within it, gave mass to weightless particles. Professor Higgs who postulated the boson around 50 years ago didn’t like the popular name given to it - the God Particle. He thought it might offend some people, but I like it. It reminds me of the life energy St John poetically described when he wrote, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God…and the Word was made flesh.” In other words, an invisible life force was given substance and form, and great creativity unfolded from it, and continues to do so today. And I like to imagine there’s something of a God Particle in each of us – the ability to give those who think they’re insignificant light-weights a sense of being more substantial: That they matter and have a part to play in the universe. Just as Mr Larcombe helped me to see myself.
Ryan, did you hear about the Higgs boson that went to church? When the priest said it wasn’t welcome and should leave the boson replied, “I’m not going anywhere. After all, without me there’s no mass.”