Light the Stars

What will the days bring? This time, like no other I recall, left me feeling as if there is no net under my tightrope. 

As I tried to sleep last light, I felt as if I was falling.

As if our entire prosperous country has lost its safety net. We all listen to the weird spiders squeezing our brains, and our only answer is hostility. Worry about family, about illness, about humanity. 

Then I sat. In the dimness of fear and dark, I sat with my arms wrapped around my knees. 

I stared at an empty sky, an aching darkness ringing hollowly all around me. A chill clammy breeze goosebumping my arms, searching the dark heavens. 

I asked God to turn on the lights. 

They answered me. You are the light. 

I looked at the dark sky again and decided. 

Decide. Decide. Decide. 

There will be stars. 

Then they began, dim at first, so dim I rubbed my eyes, blinked, stared. 

I pushed from my heart, and they brightened. I pushed everything, love, hate, fear, pain, longing.

No filter. 

Spreading across the sky, they pulsed, crisping against the clearing sky. 

I’ve always longed for the stars, not realizing I was one. 

They sent their light back to me, my bare arms glowing. My heart glowing.

This is my job. 

To light the stars. 

Not an empty thinking; what to do, what to do, what to do. 

The spark that settles in your heart carries that wisdom. 

Have you felt the empty aching dark? 

Longed for a single light in the sky?

Blink, rub your eyes – for there it is. YOU made this. Breathe out. There is another, another, sparking in the dark as your own breath clears the mists from their faces. 

Breathe, watch their flames brighten. 

Look down at your own hands, see the glow, and know the stars breathe light back to you 

For

You are one of them.

This is your purpose here, and mine. 

Nothing less than to light the stars.