My own personal dance with the stars
Sometimes, in order to experience something amazing, all you have to do is open your eyes.
Ever since childhood, I’ve always been fascinated with the stars of the night sky. One of my favorite special programs in elementary school was the traveling Star Lab, a giant aluminum foil-like bubble which was set up in the library once a year. You had to take off your shoes before crawling through a passageway into this bubble because otherwise you ran the risk of popping it. It felt like entering a magical other-world. We would crawl through the dark tunnel, eyes adjusting slowly. And then, inside the inflated bubble, we looked up.
There they were, displayed beautifully for us right in our own school library. The stars of the universe, or at least the ones we can see. I would sit, twisting my head up and around, trying to take it all in at once. It was so beautiful, breathtaking, amazing. And then, as my classmates and I sat in the cool bubble kept aloft by fans, a teacher would tell the stories of the stars and constellations, describing the tales and myths created by ancient peoples to explain why the stars seemed to move across the sky in a choreographed dance, season by season. We learned how to locate particular constellations, and to know which ones we could find at different times of the year. I still use these methods to find my favorite constellations.
When I was in sixth grade, I became enthralled by a comet that was visible that year only for a couple early morning hours during the winter months. My parents were helping me do a BCR newspaper route, so we’d be up and about in the early hours, delivering the paper in Princeton. Luckily, this was the same time that the comet was visible; in fact, it was the only time of day it could be viewed. I loved locating it each morning, feeling that it was so special to be able to see it, at a time of the morning when few were awake. I felt that I had been let in on part of a great secret.
I still love looking at the stars at night. If I ever see the stars here in the Quad Cities, I always miss how many more there seem to be out in the countryside of Bureau County. I know that, theoretically, it’s the same night sky everywhere. But it just feels different. There are stars missing.
I don’t know quite what it is that I love about looking at the stars. Maybe it’s the many miles of space between each of those stars that, from our vantage point, appear to be two-dimensional in the sky. Maybe it’s the mind-boggling fact that the light we see from the stars right now is actually very, very old. Maybe it’s the feeling that I get while stargazing that there’s something bigger, something greater, something much more than this world and this life. It’s something transcendent and infinite, and so much bigger than me, yet I can experience it in such a personal and special way when I look up at the night sky. I gain a greater awareness of “the big picture” that helps me to not worry or be so concerned about the grind of everyday living or anything I might be unsure or worried about in my future.
And so, as my graduation quickly approaches, I want to share with you a quote I love from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian, spiritual writer, and Lutheran pastor who played a central role in the struggle against Nazism in World War II-era Germany: “Wonderfully taken care of by good higher beings, I wait without fear for what will come because you are with me in the evening and in the morning and most certainly on every new day.” May it be so.
Heather Holland, a former Princeton High School student, is a senior at Augustana College in Rock Island. She can be reached at heather-holland@augustana.edu.
