Today’s revival post was originally written in November 2009 by Melissa Y. This month our family continues a tradition established by my parents of adding little “thankful” leaves to the vinyl tree stuck to the kitchen door. At first it’s easy to think of 2 different things to be thankful for each day, but as Thanksgiving gets closer, you have to think more about the small things–the things like the heavens and the stars. Melissa’s post reminded me of this Wendell Berry poem, one of my favorite from college and the many back-packing trips I took with my friends. We used to lay in our sleeping bags under the night sky and take turns telling stories or quoting poetry:

The Peace of Wild Things
BY WENDELL BERRY
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998. Published and reprinted by arrangement with Counterpoint Press.

Source: Collected Poems 1957-1982 (Counterpoint Press, 1985)

Stars Bright
November 17, 2009 Daily Special darkness, light, stars Melissa Y.

After several hours of driving, I stepped out of the car and felt the breath rush out of me. In my thirty years I could not remember seeing the night sky appear as it did then. It was literally stunning. I felt like I’d been lifted into space, like I could touch the stars or breathe them in. It had been years since I’d been in a wilderness at night.

When we moved to a small rural community, I spent many nights out on our deck star gazing. The scuffle in the city council at the time was over an ordinance that would minimize the wattage allowed for outdoor lighting. How quaint, I thought, that an issue like that is even on the agenda, let alone heated. But evening after evening as I sat and marveled, I came to appreciate the emotion behind the ordinance.

The place we live now has more light pollution and the stars are not as breathtaking. I barely give them a second glance. I didn’t spend even one night this summer looking heavenward, and now that it’s too cold to do so, I’m feeling the lack. Somehow in the vastness of space, I find it easier rather than more difficult to feel connected to God. Like somehow my very awareness, the fact that I’m feeling my own existence in the face of that dark expanse, connects me to the divinity in my spirit.

I’m not schooled in astronomy. I can’t identify any constellations other than the Big Dipper and Orion. The celestial symbols of our faith are mostly a mystery to me. But even with all of my ignorance, I find that I’m able to learn something about light by spending time in the dark.