The coming Night

Did you ever sit and watch it get dark? To point out the obvious, it’s a lot like getting up early and watching it get light.

I suppose the light changing from one direction to another is similar, but moving to the dark is a completion of the day where the morning light is a beginning, an expectation.

The coming dark is different. We expect an ending, a restful conclusion. Slowly the sky moves from azure light to Wedgewood blue to grayish tones and finally to the dark, but then the surprise begins.

Stars!

If you’re fortunate to be in a countryside where no ambient city lights affect the sky view and the night sky is clear without obscuring clouds, your surprise is all the more spectacular. One by one the stars appear and then, as if it is a burst of brilliant thought, the sky explodes with pins of light.

It was Emerson who once wrote, “If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and stare.”

Looking at the stars in appreciation of their mystery and distance in the cosmos is a lot like looking at our daily lives with its mystery and place in the cosmos of life. Accept our lives, at least to some perceptions, embraces the mundanity of existence and neglects the wonder of being.

It is easy to change perceptions by changing your mind.

I don’t see much difference. Waking up to wonder or seeing it in the night sky. It is the wonder of being in the light or dark that acknowledges the divine within each of us.