Dancing With the Stars

I didn’t want to come in this morning at 7:00 yet I had been bundled up for two hours since 5:00am sitting on the deck under the night sky.  Jerry had awakened me whispering “There’s the moon.” 

For once that mind reading thing actually worked for us.  You know the read-my-mind-I-can’t-read-your-mind dance many folks do or at least we still engage in from time to time.  This time it worked!  We hadn’t talked of my wanting to get up early to see the moon but I did.  

So with a cup of hot tea in hand along with my journal, voice recorder and iphone for seeing the constellations on my Night Sky app, I made my way to the wooden chair on our deck and curled up.

This getting up early and watching the stars thing has been my habit for going on a month until this week’s cold kept me in, in bed.  As I sat bundled in my winter coat, gloves, hat and two blankets, recent internet news came to mind.  I didn’t read the story but the headline noted Melissa Gilbert had been rushed to the hospital after an incident taping “Dancing with the Stars.”  No offense to Ms. Gilbert but it occurred to me I’ve been dancing with the stars for some time but especially these mornings before light as I sit outside. 

Not having been a morning person in thirty years, I’ve discovered star watching’s not just an evening thing.  Stars fill the dark morning sky too.  When these sits first began, I noticed Antares in the heart of the Scorpion but this morning I was taken with Nunki which looks like a fish shape on my app in the constellation Sagittarius.  And always above me is a really bright star called Vega. 

Using Night Sky I can see what’s shifting above me yet something’s shifting within me.  I’ve begun to sense the grand dance in which we’re engaged.  You know this and I learned it cognitively in school but I’m getting it at a deeper level.  Watching the stars and planets shift, I’m viscerally experiencing the amazing movement of which we’re a part as Earth turns while traveling around the Sun with the moon traveling around us.

The starry constellations remind me of heavenly wall paper as I look up each morning into the sky and imagine the stories told.  Jerry says people long ago must have watched the stars the way folks today watch tv.  I like to think they watched the heavens above and the earth below and from the stars, plants, trees and animals their stories rose.

My app doesn’t tell the story of what I’m seeing which for me is probably good.  I watch and listen for the story sharing itself with me.

The story of this morning dance in which I’m now engaged didn’t start with the stars or what I saw.  It started with sound and what I heard. The Bible reads: In the beginning was the Word. (John 1:1) 

In this beginning were the birds. (Click "Birds & Cars" for pt.2)

-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 13 April 2012

dawn@imaginetheshift.com