2017.04.23 Hoping Upon Stars

Stars light the way. I watch for them every night. Despite the glare of city lights, I can see a few stars. In the summer on Nantucket there is little ground light so my stars spread across the sky making a blanket of light. They are poetry.

“Poetry and other arts come from acceptance of little signals that immediate experience contributes to beings who are alive and fallible, and changing. Any conscience relevant to that kind of activity will tend to be un-national, not American or foreign, or North or South, or Black or White, or East—but alive and ready to confer.”  William Stafford, poet.

William Stafford (1914-1993) was poet laureate of both Oregon and the United States. He was a conscientious objector in WWII. He chose not to fight—for the sake of his country.  He also said that what our country is about is: “Creating emergencies that justify emergency actions.” Is this what we do? Really? By god, it sounds painfully like American politics right now. Ponder it anew.

This Stafford poem is from “Every War Has Two Losers.” Us AND them.

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by William Stafford

Our father owned a star,
and by its light
we lived in father’s house
and slept at night.
The tragedy of life,
like death and war,
were faces looking in
at our front door.
But finally all came in,
from near and far:
you can’t believe in locks
and own a star.

This poem gives me hope for a day when we do not have to lock doors or live in fear of our neighbors, near and far. A day perhaps when churches will not be afraid to remain unlocked, be open for prayer all the time—or at least during the day. How can anyone imagine that God desires to love them unconditionally when god-houses are shut up tight: no admittance?

Locked doors are easier to tolerate than locked hearts. As long as we lock our hearts there will be wars in which everyone loses. Easter is the time we are invited to open our hearts without reserve. Ponder the starry skies and pray.

Where Are the Stars?

Where are the Stars?

I’ve been missing the stars. Each night I scan the winter sky hoping to see just one. Some nights I do but lately the clouds have taken over quite completely, obscuring the night lights.

All this star-gazing isn’t about any interest in astrology, astronomy, the cosmos, or even romance. I just love the feeling I get, something like awe and an odd safety as if there were a cover, to contain and protect, to boundary chaos.

In Genesis this covering is called firmament (in new translations it's dome) No one really knows what a firmament is, but it is set in place by a Creator to distinguish above from below, to separate heavens from earth. Its creator calls it Sky. Somehow we got the idea that God is in the Sky and we are on the earth just waiting to head for the heavens.

But when I see the stars I feel no separation.

The ancients used to navigate by the stars alone, and the Magi followed a star to find a savior in a troubled world. I’ve followed many a star and sometimes gotten off track. Our culture right now is star-struck, paying undue attention to celebrities as if they could save us.

If I were a magus I would follow a star. I’d travel with curious others, wise ones with capacious hearts. I would travel light and stop three, maybe five times a day to look down, to pray. When the journey seemed too hard I’d stop and rest, eat and talk, sit on the earth and let the heavens go.

This is in fact my life—the life of any Christian, any religious, spiritually attuned, good person who, fueled by the soul’s adrenaline, gazes up to stars but follows only what they illuminate below—perhaps a whimpering infant nestled in a dumpster’s trash and needing care.

Just tonight I saw a star—Venus—next to a quarter moon slice. One.