I got home a little bit ago, pulled in my garage, and shut the door. While it was closing, I happened to look up at the sky.
It’s a cold clear night here in Akron – clear enough to see the stars. I like living in a city with the hustle and bustle and all the people. But I do miss the stars. It’s kind of a rare thing to see a clear night sky in cloudy Akron, but we had one tonight.
Clear enough, anyway, to see my favorite constellation – Orion. My favorite because it’s so easy to find and identify. And because he has such an old story.
With all the light pollution, it’s tough to see the stars in the city. And easy to forget the majesty of them. We’re conditioned by necessity to not look right at the sun – but stars? We can stare at those. Stare, and wonder at our place in the universe.
The light from those stars travel an almost unimaginable distance from the vastness of space to us. And so many of them have already burned out before the light can even reach our eyes. Did they once shine on a world like ours? Were there creatures there that looked up at the sky and saw our sun as a distant star?
So, I took a moment in the quiet of the cold and dark to look up.
Just a moment.
Good night, Orion.