When I am down, when I feel lonely or misunderstood, when I feel like I’ve failed or that I’ve hurt someone I love, when I need some encouragement and am aware enough to seek it, I spend some time with the stars. Sometimes I take a long walk as far from the the streetlights as I can get, or I just stand outside and look up until all the earthly light is lost to my attention. I seek out my old friends, Orion or the Dippers or The Pleiades, or Vega or Sirius. Then I let my mind wander through the distances of time and space. My spirits always seem to improve as I feel my way into the universe.

This is my experience and this is my practice. But other people have different practices and different experiences with the heavens. I came across an example of that this week as I was reading How the Bible Actually Works, in a section titled “The Universe Freaks Me Out.”

I still think a lot about what’s out there—though not in a dreamy, contemplative, healthy, awed kind of way, but in a the-longer-I-think-about-it-the-worse-I-feel sort of way.
[…]

Pascal questioned the meaning and purpose of his own comparatively puny little life on one puny little planet at one puny little point in time. A man after my own heart. If he were alive today, I’d introduce him to light speed, black holes, the multiverse, the red shift, and string theory just to see if I can make a Frenchman spontaneously combust.

Peter Enns

Now, I agree with most of Professor Enns’ book and I would bet that I have as much affection for Pensées as he does, but concerning the effect of the stars I am completely at odds with both of them. I can’t comprehend how they can think the way they do.

I imagine that one of the reasons we are such polar opposites here is because Enns and Pascal primarily think about the stars while I primarily feel their presence. The whole thing is more experiential for me but seems to be more cognitive for them.

Here’s another way to look at it: It is difficult to wrap our minds around a universe as immense in both time and space as that which presents itself in billions of years and billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars. And the more you know about the universe, the more you know that you don’t know about it, and the more difficult it becomes to feel like you can comprehend it cognitively. It can begin to freak a person out.

From my inside-out perspective, it is intuitive to feel myself as a part of this whole shebang. The more I know about it—the more familiar I am with it—the more it feels like home. I have no problem putting my puny self within this magnificent universe. And I feel no need to try to cram this mysterious universe within my puny brain.

One of my education professors, Don Griggs, liked to think about teaching not in terms of covering a subject but in terms of uncovering that subject. Teaching is a matter of opening doors for students so that they can get inside the subject matter and learn for themselves. The teacher whose goal is to uncover can foster a lifelong journey of learning and discovery within her students. The teacher whose goal is to cover a subject promotes the false assumption that that there are some subjects we can comprehend, can completely get our minds around. And that can discourage both learning and discovery.

I have this great desire to feel at home in time and space. And the stars continually respond to my desire even as they keep that desire alive within me.

So the question is: Do you wish you could comprehend the universe or would you rather find your place within it?