We waited with almost baited breath. Running outside, nope, not yet, running back in.
Finally, the moon was almost to its full eclipse (I’ll take 96%) or at least as full as it was going to get.
Honestly we could not have been in a more perfect place. Voyageurs National Park is a dark sky designated park. At night, it is literally some of the darkest dark in our country. Some people find that unnerving, we find it spectacular.
The eclipse was incredibly beautiful, but what caught my eye once the sky went dark was the Milky Way above. THE STARS!
Here’s the deal. I’m a Boundary Waters girl, I’ve seen the Milky Way! Heck, I live in Leader MN. We can see the Milky Way on a practically nightly basis. But never have I seen stars so pure that they actually twinkled.
Like diamonds they twinkled in the absolute blackness of the night sky. With the moon almost completely covered there was nothing to diminish the light of the stars, and here we were standing in a place where they surrounded us.
The smallness, the insignificance of myself as one mere human hit in this moment, and it was welcome. As a person whose brain automatically runs stress and pressure, the sense of “nothing really matters” was a weight I felt lift from my body. In a moment things that seemed permanent, or scary, or irritations that have felt constant, all slipped away to the darkness.
And yet. There we were seeing it. There we were, two souls fortunate to be standing exactly where we were, when we were. It told me something in this Universe sees us.
You’ve all heard, “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it still make a sound?”
Well, if the stars in the sky twinkle, and no one sees them, is their light still as dazzling? I think not. And I think so.
Intellectually, the stars have no idea I am there. It’s all just gases filling space. That’s science.
But what if they do have a knowing of sorts. If we are a part of everything and everything lives as a part of us, then is it all one grand existence? Is there something, some force in the Universe that senses our presence and begins a beautiful exchange of energy? Do the stars twinkle because we are there to watch?
I can ask rabbit hole questions, ones far deeper, all day long. But here is where I landed with this most simply; my being here does matter, but not for the reasons I get caught up in. Not the business of making money, or handling a household, or getting everything done, but in the matters of BEING.
I was once again reminded how I get so caught up in my doing that I forget my being. Those still moments under twinkling stars are what make my life, my very existence worthwhile. That I have eyes that can see that twinkle, and a mind that can contrive that eclipsed moon, that in this Universe I am small and I can appreciate the feeling of insignificance, but as a human I am not designed to live in that permanently. That humans need to move and grow and create and evolve or we are no use to this Universe, or to one another.
We are all of it. Our doing and our being and one ignites the other when we are in balance.
Seek balance, my friends. Me too.
And do yourself a favor; go somewhere dark enough to see the stars actually twinkle.
Forever the journey, Anne