Monday, January 6, 2014

Finding stars everywhere

In Too Much Light by Jessica Powers from The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers (ICS Publications)
The Magi had only one star to follow, 
a single sanctuary lamp hung low,
gold ornament in the astonished air.
I am confounded in this latter day;
I find stars everywhere.

Rumor locates the presence of a night
out past the loss of a perishable sun
where, round midnight, I shall come to see
that all the stars are one.

I long for this night of the onement of stars
when days of scattered shining are my lot
and my confusion.  Yet faith even here

burns her throat dry, cries:  on this very spot
of mornings, see, there is not any place
when the sought Word is not.
Under and over, in and out, this morn
flawlessly, purely, wakes the newly born.
Behold, all places which have light in them
truly are Bethlehem


When I was in college I took an astronomy class that included an evening lab time.  On a few occasions, we ventured outside to the football field and look at the stars, identifying constellations and planets in the midnight blue sky.  Rather my classmates would identify the heavenly bodies in the solar system.  I would just marvel at the stars, awed and overwhelmed.  My teacher gently tried to guide me through the assignments, encouraging me to find the north star and begin from there.  The problem was I was directionally challenged at the time and his instructions that it was "the brightest star in the sky" didn't work for me.  My eye would move from one bright object to the next, never able to decide which was shining brightest.  He finally gave up and just let me enjoy light where I found it.

This somehow seems like an important memory with which to begin the new year.  The end of 2013 slipped through my hands like a skittish kitten and I have the scrapes and scratches to prove it. Rather than focusing on resolutions this year-- the shoulds, and oughts-- I think maybe I'll just resolve for 2014 to be open to the light where ever I find it.


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