Dancing with the Stars

Last year we had what we thought was a fool proof plan for seeing the annual August meteor shower, the Perseids. Instead of sitting in our suburban backyard, brightened by our neighbor’s houselights and the orange glow of a street light so that only the boldest and brightest of stars can be seen, we drove three hours to the country house of friends.

After a delicious dinner and a couple of games of scrabble, we dressed warmly, took our plastic Adirondack chairs out to the clearing, and stared up at the sky waiting to see the promised shower of meteors. I expected to see a show, a naturally occurring fireworks display that would take my breath away with wonder as the sky filled with the light of shooting stars and their tails going this way and that.

That’s not what happened or what we saw. Granted, there were a few shooting stars that graced us with their beauty. I counted about 4 in the two hours that we sat there. But what we did see was a magnificent sky, filled with stars of different sizes and intensity of light. We saw the river of light called the Milky Way with its 100-400 billion stars and at least 17 billion earth-like planets! We saw the vast, limitless universe extending distances far beyond our comprehension. We saw the silhouette of the tree tops looking inky dark at the edges of our clearing. We became aware of how little we are in this universe, as individuals, as a species and as a planet. It was an awe-filled experience that sort of put us in our place.

The words of Psalm 8 come to mind from the days when people nightly looked up to the heaven and couldn’t help but respond to what was there with awe:

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?

The psalmist and I may understand that question differently. Influenced by the Judaic tradition, the psalmist assumes humans have a special place in a hierarchy, chosen by a G-d on high, with the authority to rule over plants and animals. I ask the question presuming our frailty, tininess, and hubris in the greater scheme of things. For me, the answer is humans are just amazingly fortunate that we get to be a part of this tapestry at all!

Whichever way you see the answer, the experience is humbling and deepens or broadens the view of our place in the universe. It allows us to see a far bigger picture than we would otherwise. Of course, anyone who has taken the time to look at the sky like that will have a similar recognition. But the trouble is, we rarely do it! We are so busy running around with our everyday lives, so busy pursuing or worrying about the picayune things that we make into monumental ones, that we don’t keep it all in perspective. We forget just how tiny and inconsequential we are in the greater scheme of things.

Perhaps like meditation or prayer, going out and looking at the night sky should become a daily practice. Perhaps such a daily practice would be a meditation or prayer. It certainly would nudge us out of our self-centered concerns and remind us of who and where we really are. Maybe it would get us to prevent wars.

I might not have seen the Perseids, but it was a night to remember nonetheless!