Looking at the stars

There were just a few clouds when I stepped out on our back deck last night. Our neighborhood has street lights, but they are not the super-bright ones that make it impossible to see the sky at night. I took a little time to gaze at the stars and watch the sky as a few airplanes crossed overhead. This house is sort of reversed from the one in which we lived for twenty five years in the Black Hills. That house faced north and our back deck was on the south side of the house. This house faces south and our back deck is on the north side of the house. The rental house where we lived for a year between those two houses also faced mostly south with the back deck on the north side of the house. As a result, I’m not feeling disoriented about directions in this house despite the winding roads that lead to our home.

It has, however, taken more than a year for me to begin to become oriented to the night sky. I look up and have to think for a while before I can identify familiar stars and planets. I have to do a bit of searching for the constellations, which sometimes aren’t quite where I expect them to be. I have decided that the issue is not so much the orientation of the house as the clouds in the sky.

First of all, there are simply more overcast days here than any other place we have lived. When we moved to Boise, Idaho, now more than 35 years ago, our realtor boasted that the city enjoys 360 days of clear skies each year. That boast might not be completely accurate, but there aren’t many cloudy days in that place. When we moved to South Dakota, there were a few more cloudy days, and we would occasionally wake to the magic of fog in the hills, which made the place seem mysterious. It also added a delightful sparkle to all of the trees on frosty mornings. Now we live in a place where the locals say a day has clear skies when there are still plenty of visible clouds. If there is a patch of sky without a cloud, we tend to simply enjoy and appreciate the view of the blue, or at night, the patch of stars.

The winds aloft must have been blowing strongly last night because as I sat outside and looked up at the sky, the clouds were traveling across the sky at a good place, leaving the patches where I could see the stars in between and giving me a view of most of the sky from horizon to horizon over a period of 15 or 20 minutes.

I am not an astronomer. I can’t name very many of the lights I see in the night sky. I know the locations of just a few of the major constellations. I understand the principles of celestial navigation, but I couldn’t apply them. I’ve never used a sextant when finding my way depended upon my ability to make an accurate measurement.

However, I do appreciate having a sense of where at least a few of the major stars can be found in relationship to where I am. I appreciate how ancient people were able to find familiarity in the night sky and learned to find their way home based on their observations. I marvel at the journeys undertaken by people to cross oceans in a time before radio navigation or GPS, but I can identify with the sense of feeling oriented to the world when you can see the night sky.

We are approaching the time of the year when we always tell the story of wise ones from the East who followed a star to visit a baby. The stories of our people say that those wise ones worshiped the baby and offered gifts. We’ve used that story to explain our own traditions of giving gifts as we celebrate Christmas. I’ve read the story so many times that I have entire sections memorized word for word. The other parts of the story are so familiar to me that I can tell the story without any reference to the words on the page. It makes sense to me that people in the ancient world would have noticed a change in the night sky. A star that was new or different would have been worthy of study and caused a careful observer to question the meaning of such a phenomenon. They didn’t have airplanes and satellites to contend with when they observed the night skies. They also didn’t have light pollution that results in our being able to see fewer stars and planets.

On the other hand, while the process of following a star worked to get them to a particular region, it didn’t give complete directions for them to find a specific address. To find the child they had to stop along the way and consult with other scholars, including those who were familiar with the traditions and scriptures of the people. They used clues from the writing of the prophets, given to them by the advisors of the king, to find the child. And then, they trusted their instincts and the messages of their dreams to plan an alternate course for their return journey.

I only know the story as our people have been telling it for thousands of years. I don’t have access to many of the details. I once attended a planetarium show that purported to explore what the star of Bethlehem might have been and how it could have appeared in the night sky, but such a program is based on quite a bit of conjecture and speculation. After all, we don’t know the exact day or even the time of year in which that star appeared and the wise ones used it to find the Christ child.

Looking at the night sky, however, inspires awe and wonder in me. So do the stories of our people. Both are necessary for me to understand where I am and my place in this vast universe.

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