When I Consider the Heavens...

"To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don't worry about the darkness, for that is when stars shine brightest!" As much as I'd like to take credit for that statement, alas and alack. I found it on a quotes website. But how often do we really take the time to consider the stars? For those of you who don't know, I'm scared silly of the dark. I've only in recent years been able to give up on having a nightlight. My brother gets highly irritated when I make him do something outside for me, even if it's something as trivial as going out to my car to get something, because I'm too chicken to do it myself. It's not laziness, Evan, I swear!And it's not even the dark I fear, necessarily. I fear what the darkness holds. My all-too-imaginative mind is always creating rapists, monsters, rapid dogs, irritated raccoons and a hive of angry bees that are just waiting behind the air conditioner unit, drooling in their desire to wreck havoc on me. Evan was kind enough one year to buy me a high powered flashlight, and it helps when I've got to walk to my car at night. But still, as you are all infinitely aware by now, I don't like the dark. However, I do like stars. I can stand outside for forever, just looking. When I was a little girl, I used to plan going outside during a warm summer night, getting onto a float in our pool, and falling asleep. Thankfully, I was always too sleepy or, yes, too afraid of the dark to ever actually do this. I think my love of star-gazing was developed in the third grade, when I did a DAR project on Maria Mitchell. Aside from being known as a pioneer in the area of education, Maria Mitchell discovered a comet. After having written an essay, drawn a poster and a stamp, and performed as Maria Mitchell in one of those "Halls of Famous People", in which you dress up and are still until someone pushes a button and you talk about the person you're imitating, I was hooked on the idea of discovering a star. Of course, my early exposure both to Star Trek and the Apollo 13 movie are both possibly very viable culprits. I also like stars for the wish factor. I cannot see a star at night without making a wish, usually the same one every time. But I won't tell you what it is; then it might not come true, you see. There is something so mysterious in a tiny, blinking light high aloft in the ebony sky that makes you feel certain that maybe, just maybe, your wish will come true. A little bit of magic exists in the stars, a magic that is close enough to see, but forever too far away to touch. There is something so brave about them, and I find myself loving one of Madelaine L'Engle's descriptions of them, as warriors who are forever fighting the great evil, and are slowly winning the battle. Which is why I wrote the following poem, titled "The Unknown Battle: It must be so hard to shine on high,
In danger of falling from the velvety sky
To offer yourself in total sacrifice
When no other gift would ever suffice.

The stars place themselves between us and the night
And continue to shine with a glorious light
Their arms are spread in total acceptance
As they sing while performing their cosmic dance.

Their eyes behold the earth with its trouble and strife
Where people live between dark death and sweet life
And offer their examples of courage to men
Who, at the stars urging, turn from their sorrow and sin.

Yes, it takes great bravery to continue on
When the dark is coming and the day is done
Knowing that one day your time would come
To fall from the sky, and leave your home.

Still, I will follow in the star’s glowing wake
And will be brave with every breath that I take
For when a star falls, the darkness must flee
And another star soon joins the night’s harmony.