In Quiet Contemplation

In Quiet Contemplation

Sitting in the middle of my back yard there is a big wooden swing.  London, New York, the Grand Canyon notwithstanding, this wooden swing is one my most favorite places.

I live in the desert.  I moved here six years ago.  Back then the moonless night sky was black, unobscured by the incandescent glare of city lights and civilization’s attendant pollution.  Stars shone, primitive and unencumbered in the dark of night.  Today, development has begun its encroachment into the desert’s stillness.  The sky is no longer as clear and unfiltered as it once was.  The number of brilliant stars seems to have diminished.   I know they are still there; I just can’t see them.   Still, one of my most treasured pastimes, indulged in long after the dinner dishes are done, often after the nightly news has ended, when my neighbors have dimmed their lights and gone to bed, is to sit on that  wooden swing, lay my head back on the top of the back rest and gaze upward. 

 When I first started this almost nightly ritual, seldom did a night pass without it rewarding me with a falling star or two.  And several times over the past six years I have been caught up by the thrill of experiencing a meteor shower.  And, if you haven’t experienced the absolute darkness of night pockmarked by radiant points of light traveling at lightning speed right over your head at regular intervals for several hours at a time, you must add this to your bucket list.    Today the rewards are less frequent and less spectacular—no fault of the sky.  Light intrusion and pollution inevitably trail the influx of humanity.   Still, the pleasure of sitting in the dark, in utter silence, save the jingle-jangle melody of my wind chimes in the solitary quiet of the night verges on magical.  The soft quiet surrounds me and its singular pleasure caresses my every sense.   If it’s cold, I wrap myself in a soft blanket and with a warm cup of tea, often fortified with a dash of brandy (actually sometimes more than a dash); if it is warm (which it usually is in Arizona), a glass of wine.  I sit, relax and give in to the sky’s embrace, guiltily rejoicing there is no one around to intrude on my solitude, except my dog, who has no clue why I sit outside in the middle of the night.  Witnessing the vastness of the universe, it is hard not to feel small, miniscule.  The vast chasm beyond what the eye can see, and not being able to understand its complexity, is humbling.  But that doesn’t diminish the pleasure I derive from my star gazing exploits.

I tend to be excessive, maybe a mite OCD.   Soon after my love affair with the swing and sky began, I went out and bought a telescope in hopes of a greater engagement with the night sky.  Identifying the objects up in the heavens became an obsession.  While I’ve never been able to use the more complicated features of my telescope, I have been able to see Venus, the craters of the moon, and on one occasion, I was thrilled to locate Jupiter and spot 3 of its moons.

But looking through a telescope is a bit surreal, sterile, like looking at a digital image—fabricated, not real.   The sight through the scope, while startling and exciting, can’t replace the magic of the imagination when turning one’s head upward and focusing on the blips of light above. On occasion, I’ve spotted a rapidly moving object dissecting the night sky.  Shining like a planet, without a star’s pulsation, it gives itself away as not a celestial body but an earthly object careening around our globe, thrust into space for some technical purpose.  Maybe, it’s just a bit of space slowly orbiting ever closer to earth until it crashes, hopefully into some remote region of the planet.  Then again, it could be the space station or the shuttle when it’s on a mission.

I’ve learned to identify some of the more prominent constellations.  There is Orion, the Greek’s celestial incarnation of a hunter.  It is one of the most distinct constellations in the sky, identifiable by four bright stars, representing the hunter’s body, surrounding at equal distance a line of three bright stars, the hunter’s belt.    Descending from the belt is another line of three smaller stars which represent his sword.    To the left of Orion, from an earthly orientation, is the constellation Sirius, containing the Dog Star.   This constellation contains the brightest star in the heavens.  It is twice as dense as our sun.  And the “dog days of summer,” that particularly hot period of time which takes place from July through early September in Northern Hemisphere and from  January to early March in the Southern Hemisphere,  are so called because of the ancient Greek belief that the excessive heat was caused by the Dog Star’s close proximity to the sun.

I can spot the great bear, known to most as the Big Dipper, easily, but have a harder time spotting the little bear, or better known as the little dipper, despite the fact that when spotted  it looks like it is spilling its contents right into the larger basin of the Big Dipper.

 

Depending on the time of year, I look for Cassiopeia, who, according to Greek mythology, liked to boast of her unrivalled beauty and was referred to as the “vain queen”.   In autumn, especially early November, she shines resplendently in the northern sky.  The cluster of stars represents the queen sitting in her chair and the more prominent stars appear as a W.  Given to flights of fancy, I choose to see the W as an upside down M.  Why?   I’m Mara, Mom, Mima, Meems to the few and various who refer to me affectionately or familiarly.  And, one of my granddaughters is Miranda, so it seems almost appropriate that I interpret the symbol of the vain queen in the sky as an M.   I tell my granddaughters that no matter where they are to look up at the night sky and if they can spot Cassiopeia, the upside down W, they will know that wherever I am, I’m thinking about them and sharing a little secret connection with them.

But the one cluster of stars that captivates my imagination more than any other is a little family group, barely visible to the naked eye.  It is actually a cluster of hundreds of objects, but only a few dozen or so is visible.   When seen via the magnification of a telescope or even a high powered pair of binoculars, though, nine stars within the cluster explode in brilliant, unparalleled beauty, as much for their brightness as for their unique positioning within the group.   These nine stars, according to Greek lore, are Seven Sisters who are perpetually accompanied by their father, Atlas, and their mother Pleione, the 8^th and 9^th points of light.  In form, the group resembles a tiny dipper, and many people, when spotting this star cluster, mistakenly identify them as the Little Dipper.   Their compactness and closeness to each other evokes thoughts of a closely knit family group.   At least that’s how I like to think of it.  This star cluster for me represents my mother and her beloved sisters.  My mother is one of seven girls, half of a larger group of siblings, she being the eldest.   The image of these sisters, so close, so loving, so faithful in life, living for eternity in close communion in the heavens above is moving and comforting. When I first became aware of these stars, and I spotted this tight cluster, I could swear that one star twinkled with exceptional brilliance.  In a split second, I had an overwhelming sensation that my mother was with me, watching me from a distance.   That brightly twinkling star was her spirit, her soul, and her ever-loving care.  I envisioned her up in the sky in perpetual peace and comfort in the company of her beloved father and mother, waiting for the tightly knit bond of sisterhood to complete its cycle.   Recently it seems that another star in the cluster has become more luminous.  Whether this increased intensity is real or imagined matters not to me.  Not long ago, one of my mother’s beloved sisters died, and there is no doubt in my mind or in my heart that both my mother and her sister, holding hands, happily and tenderly, as they did on earth, basking just as they did as children under the gaze of their parents, are waiting to be joined eventually by the others.  For all eternity, the bonds of sisterhood will remain unbroken.

In my night reverie, in the magical stillness of the dark, I don’t feel alone; instead, I feel transported to a peaceful, spiritual place somewhere inside my head, near my  heart and in my soul, as I feel  my mother’s presence.     Often, I become emotional, unable to sort out the feelings evoked by the sight of those little stars and the magic above my head that surrounds them, and a hard, painful knot forms in my throat and a warm flush of emotion travels from my chest to my head.    Often I meditate; sometimes I find myself talking—to no one in particular.   But what I do feel is a primordial sense of oneness with my surroundings, a connection with the past and the future and a sense of permanence.   I feel a spirituality that I have never felt in prayer or in kneeling in pious reverence in an incense filled church.  And, I, the doubt-prone believer, become overwhelmed with acceptance that there is no randomness to the universe and there indeed exists a force that has placed everything and everyone in its proper place and in its proper time.    I feel rested, calm, renewed, and eager for the dawn of another day.