Stepping out of my car at night, standing in my driveway in the Chicago suburbs as remnants of the summer sun’s heat still trapped in the asphalt flows up and around my legs I absentmindedly look up, and remember… 
Summer nights as a child at my Gramma’s cottage in Indiana, cool green grass under my toes, darkness everywhere with details of the lush green trees surrounding me lost in a blanket of velvety black. And I look up…
And there are STARS… a billion STARS! I can see the Milky Way and for the first time really understand why it has its name. “A sea of stars” is not descriptive enough to express the vastness and numbers of brilliantly bright sparkling diamonds that can be seen in every direction as I slowly turn on my toes in the grass.
I’m exhilarated. A yearning is sparked in my soul. It grows with every second that I gaze up at the endless sea of lights. Realization that I’ll never know what exists among the STARS ignites my longing to know.
And now standing at night in my driveway in the Chicago suburbs looking up I’m astounded at what I see…
What is happening to our souls?
Living things of beauty on this planet die without sunlight. What happens to our souls, our dreams without starlight?
For the first time in human development we are not connected to the STARS. Have our dreams and imagination become as hazy and dull as the night sky muted by earth shine?
Has arrogance reared its ugly head because we can no longer see the reality of the vastness of space and feel the humility brought on by knowing that we are not so much as a grain of sand in a sea of STARS ?
Some feel it’s a sign of progress; a small price to pay for the advancement of human kind. And it’s inevitable that old experiences and ideas must give way to the new. After all some/they say, dominion over the earth has more than enough challenges to inspire our youngest and brightest to push new frontiers in science without worrying about space, an extravagant consideration at best.
But what happens to that which has made us unique?
Carl Sagan said it best “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”
The shock and awe of starlight has driven our ancestors out of Africa to the ends of the earth, enslaved a people to build the pyramids, and enticed mankind to fly to the moon. When it no longer astounds our children as they look up at the night sky, will we watch within their eyes the fire of exploration that is kindled within our DNA (our “starstuff”), flicker out and die? And what then?
I guess, we will see…
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Tags: summer nights, stars, Indiana, Milky Way, Chicago. starlight, earth shine, science, space, Carl Sagan, starstuff | Category: Her Paradigm Shift, green, family
