Postcard From Paradise
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Go Outside and Play!
Well apparently it’s true. As I’ve been told repeatedly throughout
most of my life by many people beginning with my father, but have steadfastly
refused to believe; I am not in fact the center of the universe. I was informed
of this fact once again last night.
A serendipitous encounter in the high desert just outside Cle
Elum, during a brief period of clearing on an otherwise rain soaked weekend in
early August; the Perseid Meteor Showers is one of the most astonishing
spectacles I’ve ever witnessed. Shooting stars streaking across the sky and
disappearing so fast you’re not really sure that you saw them, and other stars
falling in long, graceful arcs as if something imagined or remembered from a
childhood dream. So many stars falling from the heavens that after an hour
you’d think the skies should be empty, completely void. And as the clouds
rolled in again, and the rains again began to fall, the sky did appear dark and
the earth appeared to sparkle and glisten as if covered with, well... stars.
There are a few simple and unexpected encounters in life that
stand out from the rest and seem to illuminate what an extraordinary and
wondrous world we live in; night-blooming jasmine, fire flies, banyan trees...
this is one.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars came
out only once every thousand years.
“If
the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how
And we watch television. Should we instead be building cathedrals,
writing poetry, symphonies, hymns and prayers to the greater glory of God?
Perhaps. We do seem to have lost our collective sense of wonderment, or perhaps
the world just moves too fast now. Or perhaps we don’t even bother to look
anymore, after all it is kind of an awful distraction from Tweeting and
Twittering.
I remember Mom’s admonition clearly: “Get out of the house! Go
outside and play!” I guess she was right after all.
