When I Look at the Stars

I stood outside tonight at 3am wrapped in a blanket staring out at the stars. I couldn't find Orion between the trees and the roof, but perhaps it was too late in the evening (or the season) for that. I'm not very good at remembering what stars will be where when; I'm just grateful for whatever the sky offers when I look.

You can't see quite as many from here as from the deck in South Carolina, but I know the same ones are there whether we can see them or not. NYC outshines a lot of them. I wonder what it was like hundreds of years ago before electric lights drenched our view. Do you suppose that's why we've become the way we are? Not only have we made ourselves so busy we've forgotten to look up, but we've actually thrown our own cloak of artificial light over our faces, making it impossible to see beyond the end of our noses even when we want to. For many people out of sight means out of mind. Are we ignoring the truth of our beginnings?

It's been awhile since the blanket of clouds was thrown aside to expose the heavens. They looked like diamonds sparkling between the naked branches of slumbering trees. We still have Christmas lights on our bushes out front and the other night when I arrived home after dark it occurred to me that the reason I prefer white lights on the bushes could be because it looks like the stars have all fallen into the shrubs.

~*~

I haven't checked in with the Runes lately so I pulled one the other night. I found Isa staring back from my palm. I found it amusing since I had thought of it before I even pulled one from the bag. I'm not sure if it was a product of my thoughts or if it was just confirming what I already knew. Winter and stillness are the messages of this rune (how appropriate in the middle of our NE winter when the temp has been down in the teens and all you want to do is stay in the house by the fire or under the blankets!). It indicates a period of waiting things out, a freeze on all useful activity, plans on hold. You could call it the hibernation of the soul. I do feel that's where I am, but it's not a bad feeling, just a waiting game until I can move forward another step; like the short space between breathing in and breathing out when you're really doing neither. Not sure what the next step is, but I think it will be in a good direction when it comes.

~*~

I'm off to watch the rest of the Zeitgeist movie. Ironically, I'd been sent a link to a portion of it on YouTube months ago, but I didn't realize that's what it was. The portion I saw only covered the similarities of Christ's birth story and many other mythologies from ancient times (explaining the whole story of Christmas). I've always known Christianity was just a repackaged version of former beliefs (my favorite expression to describe that particular religion: "The Greatest Story Ever Sold"), but this movie lays out the correlations really well. I can't imagine how anyone with a brain can deny that it's simply a story meant to control the masses. People take it all so literally tho. I guess if it keeps you out of trouble it can't be all bad, but my instinct says that's the lazy man's way of interacting with God. It's not always fun, but it's definitely more entertaining and exciting to seek your own Truth.

I've got it zipped up and on the server for a short while if you're interested. Just click here to download. If you have trouble getting it to play, you may need to install the xvid codec, available here.