Guide Us to Thy Perfect Light

I love planetariums. I don’t get to go very often, so when I do, I turn back into a little kid. Turn off the lights and teach me space things. So a few days ago when I got to attend a planetarium show, I was there. Leaned back in a dark room, a disembodied voice narrated, describing the constellations and how seafarers used the stars to navigate across the ocean. Lights pointed out shapes and routes. The stars mimicked their nightly course and aligned with that particular place on a particular night. Morning came; an orange glow increased as the stars faded, and the show was over.

By a strange series of events, I found myself looking up at the stars a second time that day. I was at a party on the beach that night, and, after my socializing battery ran low, I wandered off. I didn’t particularly want to be there, and I didn’t want to leave yet either. So I sat on the dark beach, leaned back, and stargazed. It was peaceful and beautiful; the sound of the ocean muffled the party down the beach and the racing of my mind. I could make out a few constellations, but it’s a lot harder without a narrator and light-up lines.

Still, even with my limited astronomy knowledge, I got lost finding the stars I knew, seeking shapes, contemplating how difficult and brave the old sailors were, and mostly just being—thinking of nothing at all.

Some people say looking up at the night sky makes them feel the expanse of the universe and makes them feel small. I’ve tried to feel that, the wonder of the grandness, but it’s not my natural experience. I feel the beauty and the complexity. I know that the tiny sparkles are blazing suns and that the light I’m seeing was emitted years ago, sometimes millions of years ago. I know I’m seeing fires of the past. But in the moment, that knowledge isn’t as important as basic observation. Alone in the night, everything else fades into the dark. The stars appear as if night exists only so that they can speak. They guide us across the geometry of the globe. They recite our myths. They move predictably, over and over across the eons. I find a calmness in their quiet, their predictability.

The universe does have order. From a distance, balls of exploding gases are soft, white stars. From a distance, stars millions of lightyears apart form shapes (sort of). From a distance, all is calm, all is bright. And the calmness takes over when everything is dark and I look up and escape earth, away from it all—responsibilities, people, my own feelings. I get lost in the stories the stars are telling. I don’t drown the vastness. I don’t fly up into the sky. I reach equilibrium. I be.  

Eventually, I lower my gaze, back to the space and time around me. I drove back to my hotel, the city lit up by artificial lights—safe, but not nearly beautiful. Suddenly, the sand and smoke accompanying me home were irritating. The noise, the lights, the obligations—the calmness evaporated as soon as I left the dark beach. And I knew I wouldn’t get to see the stars like that for a long while. But they are still there, in their predicable paths and primal patterns.

At this time of year, it seems like light is all we can think about. The days are short. We light candles, progressively more. We hang lights in trees, on homes, along streets. We hold candles and put them in windows. We sing about the coming light and tell of the wise men who followed a special star. We know the light is meaningful. We need it. We want it. Because the Light is promised to us—he is coming to the world to order chaos and bring us peace.