Go Ask Dad: The stars in this place

We don’t see as many stars due to the light pollution around us. After a recent rumor of car break-ins, most of our neighbors leave on their outside floodlights. I understand common sense safety measures like locking your doors at night.

But based on the hyper-reaction on social media, I also think the phrase “much ado about nothing” is as relevant in our time as in Shakespeare’s.

Long before the Bard of Avon, our ancestors studied the night sky. Sure, they had myths about the origins of the celestial lights—one group of stars was the result of Zeus throwing a woman into the heavens after he had turned her into a bear!

But I’m careful not to look down on past cultures as primitive. They could navigate oceans by the stars; I cannot voyage into the next town without a GPS.

We moderns also have our own myths. Along with the light sensors and doorbell cameras, home security systems sell a story of absolute safety. Instead of making sacrifices to Greek gods, we pay homage to technology out of the belief that our families will be protected.

But no one is promised tomorrow. Much of life is beyond my control. Ancient civilizations seem to have been more honest about this truth than us.

Long ago, some people believed that their destinies were controlled by the stars. Others expressed awe at the grandeur above them: “When I consider your heavens, the moon and stars … what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” That’s not Shakespeare but the King James Version.

When considering the moon and stars, I don’t preach to my kids. Lord knows, they get enough of that on Sunday morning. (Just ask them!)

Yet, I often think of an elderly woman in my former congregation who, as she lay dying in Hospice, spoke of her death as “my journey to the place beyond the stars.”

Where is the place beyond the stars? Where do we go when we die? What is eternity?

Questions for me to ponder, even as I try in vain to see Mario and Luigi in the night sky: “Dad, they’re those stars right over there!”

There is a great deal that I don’t see and much that I neither know nor understand. But my kids and I have this night together in this place right here. I will sit and cuddle them, inventing new constellations in the ancient pinpricks of light in the black pool overhead.