The great poet philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote,
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
Welcome to The Soul Podcast. I’m Stacey Wheeler.
This morning, as I was leaving the house before dawn I paused and looked up at the sky. Dawn was showing its first light, and the darkness was starting to give way to the blue. There in the eastern sky, a bright star was shining through. In spite of the increasing blue of the sky, it seemed to grow brighter. And in this moment, I noticed my mind pondering.
“What star is that…maybe it’s a planet?”
“How do you tell again? Is it planets that don’t sparkle?”
“Why does it seem so bright when every other star seems to be fading?”
And finally, I had the thought, “Even after it fades, it will still be there.”
When I pause to look at the night sky, I’m always left with at least a touch of wonder. The clearer the view, the greater my wonder. I like to camp in the desert. I don’t care much for the dry head of the day or the extreme cold of the nights. But I love the way the night sky looks out there, so far away from the city lights. That’s why I go. The desert night engages my sense of wonder like few places do. When I’m in the desert, it’s all about the night sky.
A moonless night on a cloudless sky in the desert creates a mystical experience. The stars are so bright… and the sky is so clear that you can see the Milky Way stretched across the tapestry of blackness. There are so many stars my mind can’t seem to process the immensity of it. It leaves me feeling small. It leaves me inexpressibly in awe. I feel my soul rise to the surface.
When I think of all those amazing experiences, I understand that we know about the stars and the solar system. We understand the mysteries of the universe better than at any time in history. When we look up, we have some sense of what we’re seeing. Far off, we can see large balls of matter. Most of which are on fire. There are an endless number of suns at an outrageous distance from Earth. And we sort of understand that. We have some context to put it in because math and science have made it more tangible for us. More than a thousand years ago, fine men like Galileo and Ptolemy did the math and created a model for how the planets move. So, now we understand, right? But think what it must have been like for the people of ancient times to look up at a sky so full of mystery. The current human form goes back at least 300,000 years. Some say much, much further. Way back then human brains were as developed as now. They too would have looked skyward, with no explanation for what the night sky was.
But even looking back a short way, people were still living a sense of awe. Imagine even four or five generations back. In 1862, the sky was still such a mystery that even Generals of the American Civil War were beguiled by its wonder. After the first few days of fighting at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, there was a pause in the fighting as evening came in and the North started to take stock of the huge losses, they took that day. Thousands of men had fallen. The South had the upper hand on the evening of December 14th.
As night came in so did a rare sight. The Aurora Borealis… the Northern Lights appeared in the sky over Virginia. This was unusual, so far south. Modern astronomers tell us it was likely caused by a massive solar flare. But the result was a sky filled with rippling color for hours. Many Southerners, who had never seen such a thing before claimed that the dancing lights represented God celebrating their victory. And soldiers on both sides of the battle noted the event in diaries and letters home. Many spoke of awe and wonder at the sight.
Around the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean a nine-year-old Dutch boy would also have been looking skyward at the Northen Lights. Many years later he wrote,
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
When he was in his late 30s, he’d paint one of the most iconic images in history. It was simply a sky of swirling stars. An image he called Starry Night. An abiding wonder of the night sky had played muse for Vincent Van Gogh.
Only four of five generations back people were still in wonder of the night sky. Enough to write poetically about it, make art of it and even attribute what we saw to the hand of God.
But even then, we had some notion of what caused such nighttime beauty. Imagine if we could go further back. There is no electricity. No city lights to obscure our ability to see the nighttime sky. Before the time when Galileo started to explain how it all works. Long before the nighttime distractions provided by electricity… television, movies, and other night life.
For millions of years, the movement of the night sky was the best show in town. The slightest changes in the night sky were quite exciting. A shooting star, a comet, or eclipse… these were rare and amazing. Over the centuries and across all cultures, epic tales would be written about the position of the stars. How these groups of stars represented gods and how the positions of stars at the time of our birth determined our personalities.
We are instinctively drawn to the natural world. We feel awe when we silently experience it. It is because we are part of nature, and it is a part of us. Think of all of the evidence of how a full moon changes our behavior. And how we change with the seasons. I remember the first time I heard about Seasonal Affect Disorder, (which is sometimes called winter blues).
Growing up in the Northwest, I’d noticed how I (and others) could get mopey as winter came in each year. When I read the explanation why it happens, it made perfect sense. Our bodies get vitamin D when exposed to daylight. And vitamin D is a key component in production of Serotonin (the ‘happy hormone’). So, less sun in the winter can lead to a vitamin D deficiency. So, the change affects our serotonin level and our mood. And all of this comes from the way we evolved to thrive on Earth -as part of this ecosystem. We are part of nature. When we’re away from it, we suffer.
All cultures have nature in common. Our affinity for it. Our obsession with it. Consider our desire to give flowers as an expression of love and as a representation of beauty.
“Shall I compare thee to a rose?” said Shakespeare.
We are linked to nature because we are nature ourselves. But we forget sometimes.
Electricity. Television. The internet. All this modern magic is a triumph of human ingenuity. But sadly, we’ve largely exchanged our connection with nature for our connection with technology. Yes, we still have nature. But we’ve lost the sense of wonder we once had. We’ve lost the sense of awe that comes from looking skyward. We’ve lost the silent moments alone in nature. The sense that we’re but a small, tiny dot on a speck of dust, spinning through a universe we will never fully comprehend the size of.
Yes, there is still so much wonder. For all we’ve been able to understand, there are countless things we don’t know about the reality of reality. We understand how we are part of a solar system that is centered around a single star we call the Sun. We understand how the Earth has a wobble, that causes a change in the seasons. And we now understand there are more stars in the universe than there are specs of sand on all the beaches of the Earth.
But what about those stars? Are there other conscious beings on planets orbiting those stars, looking up at the beauty of the night sky wondering the same things we do?
And what’s beyond what we can see in the universe?
It is human nature to wonder. To sit in awe of nature and ask ourselves questions; some of them unanswerable. And isn’t this sense of wonder one of the things that makes life so amazing? Vincent Van Gogh said,
“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
And you know, Life is enchanted when we slow down and be silent with it. The world is still filled with awe and mystery. And how beautiful that it is. When’s the last time you were ‘clearly aware of the stars infinitely on high’?
Give a gift to yourself. Tonight, look for an open patch of sky. And listen to your mind as it ponders the wonder of it all.
Don’t try to answer the questions it may ask. Simply take it all in. This moment too is but a season in your human journey. And Thoreau says,
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”
Resign yourself to the influence of Earth.
Happy Autumn. And remember to take your vitamin D. Be in awe. Stay happy.
