Two more observations

Last night I had planned on adding two more observations of this past weekend. However, I glanced at an interesting, exhaustive web-site and was lost for the evening.

I forgot to mention the stars in SW Minnesota. I’ve heard that they’re the same ones that can be found in the Metro, but oh what a difference the lack of city lights makes. I know this from past trips to the sticks; but with a late rising moon, they were simply majestic. They warmly greeted us as we arrived late on Friday evening. But they didn’t provide much help as we attempted to back our trailer into the pitch black wooded area which was to be our camping spot for the weekend. It’s a good night when the little dipper is almost as visible as the big one, and the Milky Way band of light looks as appealing as the candy bar. A good night for stars always reminds me of the line from Rich Mullins’ song “Sometimes by Step” where he sings of nights like this causing him to think of Abraham and “how one star he [Abraham] saw had been lit for me.” Looking up into the sky at night can not only bridge the gap between us and those half a world away (hello Mai and Inga), but it also links us to generations past (and future?).

The other observation I meant to make concerned three days without radio, TV, or newspapers. It was nice. With so much heartache and violence filling the airwaves everyday, it was good to get a reprieve. On the day we left the news reports were escalating from the Russian school. On one hand it’s not good to be ignorant of the extreme evil present in this world, but it’s also not healthy to have too rich a diet of bad news. The weekend isolation from tragedy was soothing for me. The extent of the challenges for us was an overly moody teen-ager and a Georgia-like humidity. We survived both.