Long Night at the Battalion (or Thinking About Planetariums)

Why, hello everyone. It's almost 2 a.m. here, which means I've got about...another 20 hours (it would be 17 if I wasn't watching the Palin/Biden comedy hour tomorrow) before I get some real sleep. Why Army decides to do it this way, I'm not quite certain. Regardless, here am I.

It's not that bad, I suppose. I get to catch up on work (which I have little of these days, comparatively). I get to catch up with my man Olbermann on the web (same funny stuff, as long as you're of a certain political persuasion). I get to bring all my cool Christian books to work that I've been meaning to catch up on and leave them on my desk because I got so bored I'm not in the mood to read them.

One of these nights, spend a couple minutes looking at those stars. I don't know about you, but if I stare at them long enough, I start remembering those days of being in grade school and going to the local planetarium. That was pretty weird, but neat in a way. It's this big dome with circular seating (so you could flick pennies across the room when it got dark), a huge Star-Wars-looking contraption in the middle, and some strange dude who would get fussy if you tried to touch any equipment. After settling down the class (fat chance), the guy would dim the lights, put the 'droid' in motion, and put on some hypnotic transcendental music and talk about constellations, using a sweet laser pointer (because those were cool back then) to point out groups of stars that seemed to have no significance.

So that's what I think about when I stare at stars for a moderately long time.

If I stare at them even longer, I start thinking about how old and far those stars are, and about how they got there, and why God put Orion's Belt and the Ursula Minor and the Little Spoon just so. I think about what people of long ago thought when they looked at the stars. When Paul or Isaiah or Jacob looked at those stars, what did they think? What did they dwell on? Certainly not about planetariums.

I'm sure sometimes they looked at the stars because they were bored. But sometimes, I think they needed some perspective. It's a very vulnerable place to be, out there among those stars. You start to feel very small. For me, that's a good thing. My mind starts to get quiet, and sometimes it even listens. There's a real sense of eternity that seems to fall from those little twinkly things. Makes it seem like the tiny space we occupy, and the little time we have are insignificant, yet important all at the same time.

You should try it some time. Without the goofy music and laser pointer, of course.