Tag: aurora borealis

When I drink in the stars and upward sink
into the theater your words have wrought,
I touch unfelt immensity and think—
like Grandma used to pause in patient thought
before an ordinary flower, awed
by intricacies hidden in plain view,
then say, “You didn’t have to do that, God!”—
Surely a smaller universe would do!

But you have walled us in with open seas
unconquerable, wild with distant shores
whose raging dawns are but your filigree
across our vaulted skies. This art of yours,
what Grandma held and I behold, these flames,
frames truth which awes us more: You know our names.
~Michael Stalcup “The Shallows”

there will be sun, scalloped by clouds,
ushered in by a waterfall of birdsong.
It will be a temperate seventy-five, low
humidity. For twenty-four hours,
all politicians will be silent. Reality
programs will vanish from TV, replaced
by the “snow” that used to decorate
our screens when reception wasn’t
working. Soldiers will toss their weapons
in the grass. The oceans will stop
their inexorable rise. No one
will have to sit on a committee.
When twilight falls, the aurora borealis
will cut off cell phones, scramble the Internet.
We’ll play flashlight tag, hide and seek,
decorate our hair with fireflies, spin
until we’re dizzy, collapse
on the dew-decked lawn and look up,
perhaps for the first time, to read the long lines
of cold code written in the stars. . . .
~Barbara Crooker “Tomorrow” from Some Glad Morning

But when Aurora, daughter of the dawn,
With rosy lustre purpled o’er the lawn.
~Homer from the Odyssey

Aurora is the effort
Of the Celestial Face
Unconsciousness of Perfectness
To simulate, to Us.
~Emily Dickinson

…for the sun stopped shining.
And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 
Luke 23:45

A little over a year ago, an incredible display of aurora borealis paid a rare visit to our part of the Pacific Northwest. It felt appropriate to whoop and holler when the expanse of multicolored lights began to shimmer and shift above us.

Yet as the colors deepened and danced, what struck me most was the sense of how the heavens and earth seek a “thin place” where the space between God and us narrows to a hair-breadth, summoning us to communion with Him.

Just as the curtain barring us from the holy of holies in the temple was torn in two at Christ’s moment of death, with this display, the curtain between heaven and earth seems pulled apart allowing His Light to reach us.

All earthly matters which cause grief cease to matter, such as
wars and talk of wars, with politicians grandstanding 24/7.

Sadly though, our flawed and fallen human foibles continue on, oblivious to the perfection of our Creator and His universe.

We are unable to separate ourselves from God’s grandeur and creation when He bids us to witness His celestial face.