MYSTICAL/NON-FICTION
Winter Skies and Rising Suns
And then God’s organ pipes appear
A wise man once said, “One sun sets — a trillion suns appear.”
How right he was.
Of course, the sun that sets, our sun, sets locally and none of the others ever really set, not for us in any case.
I grew up in a part of northern Sweden, where — especially in wintertime when dark fell around two in the afternoon and clung to us until ten or so the next morning — the stars were so bright and seemed so near you could almost touch them, if you really stretched. At the very least, they were countable.
The big dipper seemed to rule my overhead sky and the Milky Way was a bright, broad band stretching from horizon to horizon. It’s not for nothing that the Milky Way is called “winter street” in Swedish.
Cassiopeia adorned the northern sky with its slanting W and toward spring Orion would rise above the southern horizon, his magical sword dripping, one-two-three.
When this happens every winter night that is not beclouded, star-awareness seems to seep into your heart somehow and make itself part of your internal landscape. You simply know them, like you know the wallpaper in your room, like you know the warm rain that falls now and then…
