Friday, December 23, 2005

a moment of Wordsworthian transcendence

At night the stars shine so bright here, the brightest I've ever seen. Standing in a still field of blank whiteness, enshrined in a stiller shroud of untarnished black, with stars casting a soft, soft light, the world seems more pure - fresh, clean, unblemished. As if I, arisen perhaps from the freshly fallen snow draped lightly on the womb of a new world, had just been born, and it is I, naked to a million eyes peering from a great wall of dark. And I know that there is Someone there, who once made the earth, and it was pure, uncorrupted; and once made a man, who felt utterly alone, and felt a montrous tug in his soul to see behind the veil of darkness, punched with incomprehensible, blazing beacons, like lanterns on a darkling sea, that spun and danced to the times and the seasons in a cosmic ballet. How easy it is to feel like a mere part of a grand machine - like a superfluous comma in a great tome, when so many things seem so much greater than us, yet knowing with instinct that everything has significance. Its a touch of the sublime, giving rise to superstition and belief in a higher purpose. Giving hope to those lost in a world that beyond its seeming newness, is in truth bleak.

I looked up tonight and saw the flaming streak of a falling star, and immediately wished for something so completely unselfish, and so much more a prayer, that I hope God would look past all silly superstitions and honor it, according to His will. I remember as a boy, lying on the cushion of Saint Augustine grass in front of my house, looking up at the stars that were so distant, and yet not distant in my imagination. I could see myself floating in the space between, gazing at the glory of the stars and planets, but forever moving, moving, moving into infinity, and thought that this would be heaven: to see and awe for eternity at the creation of God.