The Stars Sing Together

“Mary Poppins….took something shiny from her basket and fixed it to the glue. When she took her hand away they saw that she was sticking the Gingerbread Stars to the sky. As each one was placed in position, it began to twinkle furiously, sending out rays of sparkling golden light.

“They’re ours!” said Michael breathlessly. “They’re our stars!””

~P.L. Travers, Mary Poppins

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Eight years after graduation, a young man asked his former high school teacher, “If you don’t look at the stars, they don’t exist! Do you remember saying that?”

The teacher did not remember, but the student had attached such meaning to the discussion that it had taken root in his mind, so much so that, because of that lesson, he always remembered to look at the stars.

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In The Magic of Images, art professor and atheist Camille Paglia laments that as a culture we "have lost a sense of the tangible and of the power of the hand” to create; the human hand, she says, is "the great symbol of man the tool-maker as well as man the writer.”

If you have never done it, you may not know that hands shaping clay into a pleasing form satisfies some need in human nature, as does whisking chalk dust from a drawing, or cutting and fitting glass into a lamp; perhaps the satisfaction derives from the intense concentration these actions require.

The tactile sensation is also pleasant; some people value, a handmade product in a nosily impersonal world that is increasingly electronic.

My father’s hands fascinated me when I was little: they were manly, big and capable, the veins bulging like squishy spaghetti.

His hands were always busy, sawing wood or painting or holding one of the many ancient books he read.

He was my hero, so I usually hung around wherever he was: long phone calls were not unusual for him since he served on a church board and had family in distant states.

In those days, you did not walk around the grocery story shouting into a cell phone scaring other shoppers; you were tethered to the single black rotary phone on the desk in the living room.

Invariably he doodled while he talked; thus, his hands spoke in a way his voice did not. Always a piece of paper nearby, he sketched faces and birds and animals and wrote in fancy script. 


After he hurried off to do something else, I inspected the forgotten doodles; his lines were firm and sure, rarely searching for the shape. He was a natural artist, but expressed it only in his more un-self-conscious moments.

Having watched my father and felt the same need myself to create, I have never doubted that this urge originates in the heart of God.


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And why not?


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(**I will interject here that, having studied Genesis 6: 1-4 and Deuteronomy 32, I have changed my perspective about these “cave dwellers.”**)


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Since early times, man has struggled to record his time on earth, but also illustrate life at the moment he lived. 


Without the luxuries of washing machines or movie theaters or computers, somewhere in a cave someone settled in next to a wall with a crude brush and homemade paint and drew images of his life and his universe; even the most primitive individuals were aware that some day, millennia later, curious descendants would marvel at the tale their forefather told.

Surrounded by danger and their survival dependent upon how much food was acquired that afternoon, why do you suppose anyone would spend precious time squatting in a dank corner, scratching out stick figures? 


Yet the cave woman clutched primitive tools tightly in hand and, without regard for the disapproval of her peers or the quality of their drawings, she created --stubbornly, deliberately and purposefully.

Artistic expression has never been exclusive to artists with rich benefactors: snatching moments to brighten the cabins, huts and teepees in which they lived, for centuries commoners wove geometric designs into the most mundane of tasks; women sewed quilts, priceless in value not just for warmth, but for beauty.

Native Americans who wandered a stark and unforgiving wilderness colored beads to decorate their clothing, moccasins and head dresses; they wove blankets and shawls shot through with wild colors and decorations that replicated patterns in nature.

Early settlers used nuts and berries to dye clothing because as humans, we instinctively love bright variety, form and innovation.

Yet somehow, it is comfortable for some people to believe that this extraordinary universe just fell into place: no finger designed the zebra’s stripes, no smile accompanied sculpting the koala and no eye twinkled in the formation of a tiny hummingbird.

Who has not laughed at the cartoon that depicts God rolling snakes while exclaiming merrily, “Oooo, these are easy?”

Is it not natural to know that God reached down from His heaven to form this planet, to fill it with texture and color and shape and then laugh delightedly at what He had made?

Could not a force in the universe have made all, including the fantastical brains of men and women who themselves create vehicles that fly in the air, move swiftly across the water or speed over the earth on which we walk?


Who has not watched in awe as the early morning sky begins to blush and wispy mists rise over the river?

Or watched the fireball of a setting sun of amber and flame and wondered not only at its beauty, but what it has seen over thousands of years? 


Driving into the moon with the rising sun behind, do not the diaphanous clouds resemble a curtain drawn over the edge of the globe, shielding our eyes from a reality beyond what our physical eyes can see?

In Genesis, the formation of the sun, moon and stars is described as writing the “family records”; the heavenly bodies stand as faithful witnesses of God as He watches both the good and evil deeds committed by His most intelligent creatures.

As one would name a child, each of those heavenly bodies (which have guided ships and travelers for centuries) is named and known to their Father.

Did God’s hands scoop up the valleys, shape the trees and splash the seas over the surface of the earth?

Did He not hang stars—our stars--in the sky to twinkle at night to guide our steps?

Do you never hear a voice in the thunder or a song from the stars?

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What supports the earth’s foundations, and who laid its cornerstone as the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy? Job 38:7 *************** Morning Stars

gouache on rice paper on board/encaustic

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