December 7, 2010...

It was a typical night tonight; so full of the usual distractions that have become commonplace in my life. I watched a National Geographic segment on the White House chief photographer and then took in the mindless, over-dramatic world of Bones in which a CIA desk worker was murdered for uncovering a sinister plot.

It was cold outside to say the least. The weather app on my phone said it could freeze tonight and I believe it. I took some sheets and carefully covered some of the exterior flowers in hopes that their delicate bodies will last the night and then, inexplicably and without reason I began to walk.

I walked down my street, shoulders hunched against the cold and collar turned up, in an attempt to hold out against the invasion of frigid air. My Ipod played loudly in my ears as I walked without any purpose, without any real thought and then I turned to my left and saw the house lights reflecting on the water and I paused. There was something so peaceful, so tranquil that my mind took a picture and wished this moment could last and that everyone could somehow see it through my eyes.

Then I did something that I haven’t done in quite sometime; I took my eyes off earth and stared towards the stars. Somehow, by Divine decree, I had stopped in the one place on the street where the glow from the lamps did not inhibit the view of the sky. I felt a smallness that I had been missing in my egoist search for existential meaning. To have any experience of value in life, one must feel truly small and insignificant and a part of something beyond scope or measure.

I had been absent for so long I felt lost looking at familiar skies. I reached up and turned off my headphones and just breathed. I breathed the cold night air and heard the roar of the waves in the distance, and the subtle sounds of a sleeping town. The stars seemed so close, a collection of tiny lights at the doorway to an inky, endless expanse; so black that you forgot for a moment the sheer depth of space. These stars were friends once as a child when I would lay on my back on the cold ground in Lesotho and stare at constellations that to me had no name; but now they only stared blankly back at me.

It seemed that the more I stood there in the street, the more I stared into the constellations, I began to see more stars, faint at first and then gathering courage and peering out from the gloom. They felt more at ease in my presence and became more pronounced, the stars that had always been visible shone with a fiercer intensity. I was becoming close again and I stood there in the disquieting quiet and heard myself think and felt more than I had felt in months; that I was alive and eternal and fragile and strangely disconnected. The wonder of stars had faded in the glow of computer screens and TV sets and the indescribable wonder of my sight I was pawning away on 30 second media bytes and pointless games.

I turned and caught a glimpse of a star as it made its final, fiery dive into the cold Atlantic. It began to sink in that I am standing on just one tiny light in space as it spins and hurls through the cosmos in perfect precision; set in motion by the breath of Almighty God. Cold air rushed into my lungs and shot back out in silver clouds like smoke. I felt small, I felt insignificant…I felt. I breathed. I lived.