What's Up?

I have come to the conclusion that we as human beings spend too much time looking down.

Not long ago I stepped out onto our back deck to gaze at the night sky with my husband. I never cease to be amazed, awed, and intrigued by looking at the stars...

I remember when I was young and I would stretch out on my back on the lawn at night and look up at the sky and get lost in the stars. It was very comfortable space travel with the solidness of the earth just beneath the cool grassy carpet against my back and the soothing cool night air breathed in lazily. Of course I experienced  the standard feelings of smallness and insignificance but I was also visited by a curiosity that took up residence in my soul--a deep wanting to know---how I fit into something so vast, why I was where I was--or when I was or why--- I was...

Getting back to that night on the deck ...I looked up and saw a multitude of stars but there was one spot directly above me that captured my attention. There was a small cluster of stars and as I looked at them I glimpsed for a moment so many more stars beyond that cluster--beyond the reach of my seeing-- that I could almost see--but not quite. I was fascinated and excited by the idea that the number of stars I could see with my naked eye were like grains of sand that brush across the tops of my bare feet when walking on the beach compared to the number of grains of sand that make up the entire beach...

As I have grown older when I look at a starlit sky I still feel small but at the same time I feel important precisely because I am so small and insignificant and that is at once humbling and comforting.  In comparison to the universe I am but a speck of life but I do live and breathe and think and feel and laugh and love and hurt and take and give...In the Bible we are told that a sparrow does not fall without God noticing and that the hairs of our heads are numbered. LDS scripture tells us that the worth of souls is great in the sight of God. I am small and insignificant but I believe God knows my name and who and why I am. Perhaps we need to feel small before we know that we are a part of something bigger and more important than ourselves.

The night sky tantalizes the human mind with possibilities and a depth of meaning that tugs at us as we feebly but persistently scratch away at excavating the treasures of our souls. The term 'naked eye' so often used in connection with star gazing is an interesting term---one that gets me to thinking about just how much we can see with our naked eye and the sometimes astonishing amount of things we miss with our naked eye---like walking past a window several times a day and not really seeing what's outside...

I see more and more people, myself included, spending a significant amount of time looking forward at a movie screen or a computer screen or looking down at a phone or an IPod---I think if we spent more time looking up both literally and figuratively we would feel lighter somehow and we would see more or the possibility of more...