Lessons Heard in the Star Song

Lessons Heard In the Star Song

superstition mountains, blooming brittlebush

superstition mountains, siphon draw

hoodoos, superstition mountains, dawn

Last year was the first time I spent the entire night under the stars. With nothing between me and heaven but darkness.

I'm not sure why I waited so long.

As a child growing up in Minnesota, the cold, the rain or the mosquitoes drove me into a tent in the evening. After moving to Arizona, four young children made the walls of zippered nylon a necessity.

But last year we backpacked down to West Clear Creek and slept as frogs chorused in an ancient mating ritual, while high in towering spruce, the birds joined the anthem of day's completion. The freshwater spring filled the missing accompaniment with background melodies. In one last crescendo, the sky burst into pink, only a small piece of sunset visible to us - without a tent - in the narrow canyon floor.

Several weeks ago my husband said, "Let's climb the Superstitions and sleep at the top under the stars."

"You're hiking without a tent?!" a friend had exclaimed when I called to tell her of our Friday evening plans of spending the night on the top of the Superstition Mountains.

"We live in the desert. It's not monsoon season," I said.

"But isn't it rattlesnake season?"

"We're leaving the dog home."

"I wasn't talking about the dog."

"We'll be fine."

I thought of those words when we reached the summit after a rain and lightning storm encounter (another story for another day.) I unbuckled my full backpack, set it against a boulder and stripped off my soaking cotton tshirt. I should have worn a moisture-wicking shirt, but I have always preferred cotton in the dry Arizona heat.

But I wasn't dry and cotton is miserable when wet. Water dripped down my bare skin.

During the rain, we had hunkered down in a low spot, scrunching ourselves into tiny balls under the tarp my husband had pulled from his pack.

But not before I was drenched.

After the storm, we had raced for the summit - as fast as our full packs allowed - chasing the last hints of daylight.

Now, thankful for dry clothes, I pulled on a long-sleeved wool shirt and buttoned it to the neck. Wool with its scratchy, natural fiber is a miracle material, retaining heat even when damp. We ate our apples and bagels while we waited for water to boil on a small propane burner. Beneath the shadows of hoodoos and dried thirty-foot century plant spikes, the cocoa tasted better than anything I had ever brewed at home.

We shook the dampness from the tarp before laying it on a flat section between boulders. We unrolled our sleeping bags and pulled off our hiking shoes and settled in for a long night.

From experience, I knew it would be a night of interrupted naps. Bones aged more than fifty years refuse to be comfortable on a half-inch sleeping pad.

I gazed heavenward. The Arizona spring sky belonged to the Dippers. The Big Dipper, upside down, spilled glory, as Ursa Major, the Great Bear, roared. Draco, the Dragon, wrapped his tail near the Little Dipper, the tail resembling a giant hunting bow in the darkness.

I fell asleep to the star song.

When I awoke two hours later, Ursa Major roared his baritone notes, but had moved from his central place in the night sky. By 2:00 a.m., he had moved again ... at 3:00 a.m. ... at 4 a.m. ... Ursa Major and his singing chorus continued their movement across the night sky.

The rational part of my brain knew the movement I was witnessing was not from the stars, but from the earth rotating on its axis, but nighttime is not a time for logic

.All I could think was, "The stars are moving."

I have gazed at stars many times, of course, but in all my years I have never witnessed the nighttime movement of the heavens - the rotation and orbit of the earth and the stars moving in their own galaxies.

There is movement in the darkness.

I am more of a day person, listening to the star song of the sun, the Prima Donna of the opera. Everyone knows the day is not over until the fat lady sings. I love to watch the show she puts on every day, and as I wrote earlier this week, I have my phone alarm set to view her daily rising and setting, because I need the truth I hear in the daytime heavens, the truth of God found in this one star's song.

God is beautiful. God is good. God wants to be known.

When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I wrote about stars. And when my mother was recovering from a stroke and a heart attack and I was all alone on the family farm, the love of God found me in a night-time sky while the grain elevator to the north swallowed the harvested fields into its belly and Orion the Hunter shouted silent.

The Prima Donna is absent in the dark skies, but tens of thousands of twinkling lights continue the chorus of the star song in the night watches.

There is movement in the darkness.

Sometimes in the darkness - dark days, dark seasons, dark words, dark memories - we believe that God is absent. Silent. We cannot detect any movement as we gaze heavenward. All we can see is darkness.

From our view, nothing is happening, so what we believe (and don't believe) about God must be true, but the stars sing a song to combat that lie in nighttime skies. The truth sings from the Bear and the Dragon and spills out of the Big Dipper:

God is moving. God is working. God has not forgotten you.

Do you hear the truth of this star song?

To be silent does not mean to be inactive. There is movement in the darkness.