Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Waiting on the Perseids



This last Saturday night, I was standing next to a bonfire with a band of brothers at StoneSong Retreat Centre in western Maryland, on the final evening of four sweet days of intentional community. My heart was full. The hearts of many of us were overflowing. After a spectacular afternoon thunderstorm that left most of us happily drenched, the sky had cleared, the stars were out. Our time around the fire was punctuated with one or another of us calling out, “There’s one!”
It was one of the peak nights of the Perseid meteor shower. The best viewing would have been just before dawn Saturday, but even if any of us had gotten up that early, there’d been cloud cover all through Friday night and most of the day leading up to the rain.
But you don’t get to order shooting stars on demand. You can’t control the conditions under which you wait for them. You can make yourself available. And that’s about it. Even when the conditions are right, you just have to let go and accept that wherever you focus your attention, you're probably watching the wrong bit of sky. You’re most likely to glimpse the streak of light only out of the corner of your eye. You may have companions to bear witness that they’ve seen it, too. Or you may have to trust, after that brief flash, that it really was there, if only for you.
What you can do is decide that the shooting star is worth waiting for, being idle for. You learn to separate hope and faith from expectation. The more often you’ve seen one, the stronger your inclination becomes to wait patiently for the next.

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