Catholica: Overcoming our fear of the dark...

From the other side of the Pacific, and taking a break from growing grass in a more isolated part of Texas, Alan Simpson, is joining us with a series of gentle reflections on the Sunday readings during Lent...

Can you do something for me tonight? If it's not cloudy — and if it's safe! — go outside and look up at the stars. Don't try to count. Just look.

The night before starting to write this, I went out and looked at the stars, the same stars that Abram viewed three thousand or more years ago. How many stars? Far to many to count. Yet I saw only a fraction of those Abram could see. When Abram went stargazing with God they were surrounded by intense, almost tangible, darkness, from horizon to horizon and across the sky above. This was very nearly the sort of darkness that existed before God created the Light and separated the two into night and day. A few campfires may have been visible, a few torches or oil lamps scattered here and there. Those small points of light could not compete with the grandeur of stars spread as far as the eye could see.

It's sad, but most of us live either in or close to towns and cities that are brightly lighted. So much of that light gets scattered out into the sky that we can't really see the stars. [Does that billboard encouraging us to "Eat Mo' Vegemite!" really need 5000 watts of illumination?] In a very real sense people are afraid of the dark: something that cannot be seen must be a threat, so we try to turn night into day because we can.

Where I live, a lot of folks want to get out of the cities and live in the country. Their reasons include getting closer to nature, cleaner air, and being able to see the stars. They buy a 5 to 10 acre tract without a tree in sight and the first think they do is plant a dead tree. The dead tree has electric wires and a cold, blue mercury light that is constantly on from dusk to dawn. A hundred neighbors do the same thing, then wonder where all the stars went.

Behind all that sky glow, above the smoke and dust, those stars that Abram saw still exist in their uncountable multitude. Even when we cannot see them, what the psalmist said is still true:

A shame, really, that so often our very human forms of artificial "enlightenment" obscure our vision of what God gives to us. Do we see only what we allow ourselves to see?

If you are disappointed because you cannot see the stars from wherever you are, have faith! The stars are still there, shining as brightly as God intended. God's promises to us are still true, as they were to Abram. I believe that because...

Alan Simpson is a leading member of a number of the online communities from which Catholica Australia evolved. He is semi-retired and lives on a ranch in the wilds of western north Texas, where he raises grass for cows, goats and sheep. Alan is a member of the board which is being established to provide a channel of financial accountability to the philanthropic supporters of Catholica Australia.

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