Under the Heavens

Yesterday at breakfast, Megan and I started discussing some of the different college courses we had taken during our years of studies. Old college days have been in thought since this weekend marked Marcia’s college graduation. Our “baby sister” now a college graduate! 🙂

In the course of our breakfast chat, Megan and I discussed our science classes. I had taken Environmental Science (being a Business major, this was the easiest to comprehend–bonus, the shortest labs!) and Megan had taken a course from her college that was equivalent in study to my Environmental class. We both concluded that the study of rocks was not our keen interest. We ventured to other areas of nature…the oceans and heavens, and it made me think back to the last summer I lived at home (San Luis Valley), before permanently moving to Denver that Fall to finish school and work.

Cosmos.

To cap off my Gen-Eds, I took several online courses from Red Rocks Community College. Besides my Humanities curriculum and online discussions, my next favorite that summer was Astronomy. Being in the science department, this also meant labs. But I didn’t mind the labs. From my parents backyard, on clear evenings with little or no moon, the heavens sparkled!! I could spend hours gazing at the stars, trying to find constellations in my Dad’s telescope or drawing the phases of the moon. One couldn’t do that living in Denver.

Growing up, we sisters would take blankets out on clear summer evenings and lay out on the grass. We would talk about life–funny stories, the little insignificantly seeming things that back then got on our nerves, fears or dreams–and stare up at the sky. I remember feeling so small…one can’t even see the whole expanse of the sky without turning your head. I know the ocean is deep, unmeasurable, but the heavens are unfathomable.

 Northern Lights Show.

Once in junior high, I was getting ready for bed. On summer evenings, it was typical of us to leave our windows open as to get a cool breeze and hear the outside voices of nature (my poeticness version of saying, “Hear the cows chewing the grassy fields and mooing distress-fully.”) I was closing the curtains half-way when I noticed the sky was glowing red. My first thought, “Jesus is returning!” and went into an excited panic moment. Then realized it was not, but couldn’t put my finger on what I was seeing. Still in an excited panic state, I ran downstairs (yes, I literally used to run down the stairs), and yelled, “The sky is red!!” My Chicken Little moment. Dad looked out the study-room window, but the corner of the roof blocked his view of the red, making my Chicken Little situation all the more realistic. But I persisted that he go outside. When we did, the sky was aglow! Northern Lights…right out my bedroom window. Unfathomable.

He who made the Pleiades and Orion,
    and turns deep darkness into the morning
    and darkens the day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
    and pours them out on the surface of the earth,
the Lord is his name.

Amos 5:8, ESV