star show

Though I’m flat on my back under the enormous sky, I know I’m really in the local planetarium, where I’ve come with the other third graders for the Star Show. Tonight the trailing blazes of white explode across the darkness like firecrackers, and my companions ooooh and point and say, Over there, though the words are too late to be of use and hang in the air much longer than light.

What I remember about the Star Show is the commentator’s calm voice, the miracle spreading overhead as he lured us in, as if he didn’t need special tongs to hand us the sky’s mysteries. He needed only the reclining seats, the artificial ceiling shuddering close with its countless stars, our willingness to leave the known earth, our parents, teachers, friends, our selves for this uncertain meeting in the dark. He urged us to let our eyes adjust for the journey, he asked us to relax as the room began to spin and he whispered in his knowledgeable voice about Jupiter. Like a priest appearing suddenly in the dome to discuss the Holy Mother, he explained with sorrow and anger that brilliant Galileo had to retract his scientific conclusions before the Inquisition.

This made us sad, because we already knew that Galileo was right, that four moons revolved around Jupiter, as the earth revolved around the sun.

And then, as though someone was shaking out a bedspread, someone shook the sky and all the stars shifted — it was winter, night of the lean wolf. His voice grew cold and we buttoned our sweaters because the temperature was falling, and we wanted to follow him wherever he was going, which was December. Across the mountain passes we hunted bear; with the Spaniards, we cured buffalo hides and predicted the hour of sunrise. Who didn’t want to linger on that winter mesa with the spotted ponies, so close to the stars?

There wasn’t time. He was galloping towards summer while I sat thinking of what I’d lost: a glimpse of the sadness to come, the astronomer’s sure purpose. He guided the constellations from early spring to June and then the sun rose higher than we thought possible and the longest day endured; he brought us into a meadow drenched with light but it was night, we knew it, for now we could name every star. How could he leave us here, now that we had become his, now that he had asked us to learn his heaven?

As the chairs began to tilt he threw the stars across the sky, flung meteors carelessly, and laughed a grown-up laugh. He punctured the darkness with white bullets and the kids began to shout. The seats fell forward and the sun rose in the auditorium, warming the air. I sat before the retreating stars, bereft. Row by row we stood and blinked into that autumn afternoon, as the ordinary jeers filled our mouths. For weeks, the sky was a white sheet against the amber leaves.

belief

This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.

 — Luke 2:12

A sign. That’s all we ask for. A sign that this craziness we call Christianity is for real and that we can trust it. That we can trust it with our hearts, with our lives, with our children’s lives. That it’s safe to believe in a God who loves us enough to come and share that love in the only way that matters: heart to heart.

And that’s exactly what we believe God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

Does it sound hard to believe? Maybe. But what is love, if not the reason of belief in the unbelievable? Do we believe ourselves so unworthy of love and happiness that we sabotage anything good that comes our way by relying too much on our heads, and not enough on our hearts?

While I was looking out the window this morning, I noticed a man carrying a sign near the bus stop. Curious, I reached for my bioptic to read what was so important to him that he would walk back and forth in the pouring rain.

The sign read, “I believe in angels.” 

And that made me wonder what that sign is saying to us.

To me, it points to our desire to set aside for a moment the stone-faced, scientific view of the world, and see things again through the eyes of a child. We long for eyes that'll see beyond what our minds say is possible to the realities we can know only with our hearts.

As believers, we recognize that the cold and calloused view of the world misses most of God’s subtlety. And He's nothing if not subtle. Take the Christmas story, for instance; it’s certainly evidence that God isn’t in the business of compelling faith through high drama.

The Lord doesn’t typically drop out of the sky and shout, “Here I am!” Instead, it’s more like the line in O Little Town of Bethlehem”

“How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given …”

It’s always up to us to decide whether we’re going to believe or not. Yes, God wants us to believe, but He never forces the issue. So God comes quietly, like the fog, as Carl Sandburg wrote, on little cat feet.

Some of that subtlety indeed went out the window in the skies outside Bethlehem. But give God a little room to work here: we are talking about the birth of the Savior of the World. It’s news that deserves all the pomp and circumstance God can muster.

But still, God’s sign to the shepherds wasn’t a whole choir of angels singing, it wasn’t the brightness of a hundred suns shining. It was a poor baby snoozing away in a manger — a baby the shepherds would have to seek and find for themselves.

Isn’t it just like God to say, “I’ve done my part. Now it’s your turn. You go. You see. You test me to see whether all this is true.”

I have to give the shepherds credit. These were no great scholars, no holy men studied in the great prophecies of the Jewish faith. I’m sure none of them went around quoting scripture to one another. No, these were rough men, guys who knew what it was to sleep in the dust with wind clawing at their faces. After the angels left, they could’ve simply looked at each other and with a nod agreed never to talk about it again.

But they didn’t.

Instead, they obeyed and went to Bethlehem. They took off not walking, but running. They ran to see the sign that would confirm the truth of all they’d seen and heard. They ran to find their Savior, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger — a great big God, in the face of a tiny baby. This was their sign, the way God chose to let the shepherds in on the plan for the salvation of the world. That night, in the face of that baby, God became real to them, maybe for the first time in their whole weary lives.

I have to believe that when it happened, they were changed. They saw and believed and praised God — not just to each other, but to everyone they saw. And these men whom most people would dismiss as ignorant, dirty wanderers after sheep — the kind of folks who, when you saw them, would make you want to keep your wallet close — these men became the first outside of Mary and Joseph to know the truth about this baby, and the first to share it. God had given the shepherds a sign and made them a sign to others. The angels weren’t the ones singing God’s praises in the stable. Instead, God had left that to the shepherds.

So I wonder on this rainy morning, looking out the window to watch the man tell the world that he believes in angels: what’ll be your sign? What’ll it take for God, for Christ, to be real to you? We may not be able to go searching for the manger baby, but I do believe there’s evidence of Him to be found everywhere, if only we look with the right eyes.

I’ve heard it said, and I believe it, that the outward signs of God’s presence get fewer and fewer as we grow in our faith.  Most of the time now for me, the strongest sense I have of God’s presence is here, sitting in front of a screen as I reflect on the day's events and lives that have intersected with mine.

But then on my way outside to talk with the Amazon driver, I saw a single dandelion, almost level with the ground, flattened by the footprints of those who came and went. What business, I wondered, does a dandelion have growing in the middle of a parking lot?

I took it as God’s sign to me that this day, there’s life. I took it as my sign that there’s truth in the unbelievable, that there’s truth in Christ and all the Church has to say about Him. I took it as my sign that this day, there’s hope.

I’ve no idea what your sign will be. It may be small — maybe even smaller than my dandelion. But remember the Lord’s subtlety. Remember how a great big God became known to some shepherds in the face of a tiny baby.

Just keep your eyes open.

Sometimes all it takes is the courage to believe.

stars

There's something about the early evening light that makes everything look security-blanket-safe and jungle-wild all at once. I wish I could live inside it for a while. Dust specks are supposed to be insignificant, I think, but how perfect it would be just to float in a stream of light, buoyed by golden warmth, too small to cast a shadow yet touched everywhere all at once by something so pure.

I think you could be motionless and still dancing at the same time.

I almost am, watching.

no time to di

I’m going to apologize upfront about the tone of this post, because I, dear friends, am slightly peeved -– and the unlikely culprits who’ve put me in a mood are our friends from the United Kingdom.

Why, you ask?

Because they’ve included yours truly on an awful list. Well, not truly yours truly, but the name of yours truly.

You know what I mean.

Anyway, here’s the low-down: BabyCentre UK recently analyzed their data for babies born in the past sixty months and subsequently reported that Diane and Malcolm were the most unloved names of the year.

Yeah, let’s just marinate on that for a moment.

Are we supposed to just sit back and take this, especially from people who spell “Center” incorrectly?? I mean, c’mon!

So this little news nugget prompted me to put on my investigative persona and switch into full Private Di mode.

I’m not pleased with what I found.

Why, you ask again?

Well, it seems that the Americans, too, have been up to no good. The US Social Security Administration maintains its annual lists of the top 1000 baby names. Their collection goes back to 1900 (raw data extends back to 1880).

Well, whoop-de-doo. Welcome to the party.

What’s on these lists? Only every baby name ever bestowed upon a child, as long as it’s been given to at least five newborns in a given year.

And so, that’s how I validated those obnoxious British claims of Dianes (and Malcolms) being unloved. My fellow Dianes and I have, and I’m using their callous and hurtful words here, “fallen into relative obscurity.”

Ouch. And the dagger of shame digs a little deeper.

So in the name of fairness, I present to you, in no particular order (but with Diane at the top of this horrid list), the rest of the “Why on God’s green Earth would you ever give your child that stupid name?” list.

Enjoy. Unless you’re on it.

WOGGEWYEGYCTSN™ 2023 Edition

Diane.

Ethel. Seriously???

Katrina. They’ve lumped the Di’s in with a catastrophic weather event. Lovely.

Bertha. Bertha?? Really????

Isis. Does anyone even know an Isis? How is Diane even on a list with these people??

Gertrude. My eye’s beginning to twitch.

Ida. Good grief.

Caitlyn. Somebody better call Bruce.

Hortense. Is this even a real name?

Myrtle. I’m gonna need a drink.

Nanette. No, no.

Maude. This is ridiculous. I’m an old lady, and I’ve never met a Maude in my life.

There’s so much more I could write about the absurdity of the discourse, but I’ll spare you all the diatribe (see what I did there, BabyCentre UK?) and simply move on.

Oh, and Happy Mother’s Day to all you lovely women out there who care for the bodies and souls of others. You’re greatly loved and much appreciated by us all — even if you’re an Ethel.

‘merica

Oh public road. I say I am not afraid to leave you, and yet I love you. You express me better than I can express myself.

— Walt Whitman

When I was much younger, three friends and I got up one morning at 5am, packed the car, grabbed the camera and pillows, and set off on a three-week road trip in a thousands-mile-long oval across the United States. We drove, walked, and talked our way through places like Jackson Hole, Topeka, The Poconos, Morgantown, Scottsdale, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and Reno. We flew past pancake-flat countryside, red, rolling desert hills, jagged snow-capped mountains, and vast concrete cityscapes.

I had a lot I wanted to say about that trip. It did so much for me, to me. I wanted to talk about the blistering, oppressive heat blowing across the Bonneville Flats. About the abandoned, eerily silent rest stop in eastern Nebraska. The dewy, thick-as-mud air I couldn’t escape from in West Virginia on our third-from-the-last morning of the trip. Watching cowboys herd cattle on horseback in New Mexico. Sticky molasses sunsets in Missouri. Tornadic storms in Wyoming, and again in Eastern Colorado. A Cadillac graveyard in Amarillo. Big horned sheep on the road outside of Denver, and three-hour traffic in Chicago. Fireworks over Des Moines, bright yellow sunflowers in southern Utah, and dynamic and massive explosions as Americans celebrated Independence Day. Sleeping under the stars at a rest stop near the Grand Canyon. Reading and writing and sketching through most of Ohio and Indiana, and standing in the middle of a long, empty desert road — yelling, waiting for my echo to come back — somewhere in Montana. Watching the clouds rotate from the windows of our cheap motel rooms. Long, slow breakfasts before the rest of the world was alive. Obscure, distant radio stations fighting the static in the middle of nowhere. Sailing on gas fumes until the next station seventeen miles ahead. Hail downpours and blinding sun and driving wind and still, dark nights. People and no people. Exhausted and alive. Driving nineteen hours straight through the night on the Loneliest Road in America. Jumping up and down on the side of the road at 2:17am somewhere in the guts of Nevada, trying to keep ourselves awake for the return trip home.

But in wanting to somehow say it more perfectly, I never said it at all. And so what you have here in front of you is all that’s left of it now, years later.

For several weeks, we searched for adventure and absorbed all God's glory in, on, and around the more than 4500 miles of country we covered between Ohio and Nevada. We breached thirteen states, eight or nine mountain ranges, and twelve major highways. We discussed politics, sports, terrorism, and life in general at countless diners, gas stations, rest areas, and dive bars. We made friends with a motorcycle gang in Indianapolis, crashed a wedding reception in Albuquerque, and spent an afternoon on an Arizona reservation belonging to the Pascua Yaqui tribe.

By the time we arrived back at my house, we were exhausted and exhilarated. We unpacked the car, grabbed some cold drinks from the refrigerator, and plopped on the sofa. After a ten-minute silence, the very first comment was, “So, when are we going again?"