Preaching at the Planetarium

I was asked to give a 3-minute reflection on the 'Night Sky' at The Leitner Family Observatory and Planetarium. As I preached, listeners faced the vast array of stars.

Lord, just the other day, I walked among the stars, as you must’ve. I was all the way up, up there on the second or third floor of the Peabody, at the 'Minerals, Earth & Space' exhibit, staring at these pristine preternatural space pebbles well-lit and set against deep velveteen backgrounds. I was there, among the stars, with my wife, my mother, and my little brother–it was the day before his 15th birthday. I was in the night sky ornamented in the same way you decorated the Christmas-tree cosmos.

I found a gem there called Brazilianite–a lurid yellowish-green, like one of your stars, say, Sirius, flashing in the sky. It was that special shade of yellow Chartreuse the Carthusian monks brew somewhere in southeastern France, and I wondered if they had looked up from their mountaintop view some centuries ago and hoped to copy the shade of some star we can no longer see for all our artificial light, a verdant Brazilianite celestial body you set in the sky all the way back on Day Four.

I learned about Brazilianite with the help of the space minerals my iPhone contains. I learned it loses the color you gave it when we heat it up and was reminded of a day last October when you lit up the night sky with the same shade of impossible green mixed with an improbable purple. The combination flitted and danced across the dusk, right above Marquand Chapel. But the color quickly faded or transmuted as it mixed with the heat of that October night, just like my Brazilianite. The night grew clear too soon.

Why, on this earth, do things so suddenly lose their color?

Yes, just the other day, I walked among the stars. Someday soon, I’ll walk among them again, and one day, by and by, you’ll show me the secret of implausible greens and imperishable purple.

Amen.