Vienna to Venice

I'm a little saddened to think that trains will have less magic for me after this trip.

After all, I've spent a substantial amount of time jumping from city to city on trains, watching the countryside sweep by as I sit stationary, doing my best to be more philosophical about the whole ordeal than thinking of Chocolate Frogs, Dementors and Scabbers. I've even spent the night on a train, in the rather cramped space of the middle bunk in a 6 bunk sleeper. I think I would slept better in a seat.

I just couldn't get to sleep, first watching Austria slip by, then staring intently overhead to watch the first stars come out. I was convinced I was going to see wonderful stars this night, since trains clearly travel through the country, where there are no city lights to block out the nightsky. I got frustrated with my space and the late setting sun and so eventually I quit straining and rolled over, ready to let my eyes rest for an extended period of time.

Something woke me up hours later. It was much darker in the cabin- maybe they had dimmed the lights in the hall. I rolled onto my back because the arm I had been sleeping on was tingling, asleep, and opened my eyes to look around.

Holy. Everything.

You could see the Milky Way. There were so many stars. I lay back and stared at the wonder of it all, unsure of my bearings in an unfamiliar slice of the sky. Have you ever seen it, a darkened sky on a clear night, with no human light to drown out what must be the divine light reaching us from so far away? Do you know what our galaxy looks like from our home, the permanent cloud in the sky that so many legends have been told about? Have you ever seen so many stars that the sky doesn't become a simple connect the dots but instead offers you shading, a billion brilliant lights twinkling more spectacularly than any photograph or word can capture? Have you seen it?

I remember each and every time I've seen a sky like this. Twice, before I could point out a single full constellation, I lay underneath a sky like this. Once, I stood outside a huge telescope, pointing a smaller optical instrument at the newly risen Juptier, looking at its cloud bands and moons. You could see the galaxy rising up like steam from Sagittarius and even though I laughed at the teapot idea then, I sat amazed at the stories that had been told about these dots in the black above us.

Once, I lay on a mountain side with some of the best people I've ever met, watching shooting stars fly against the black. This is one of my favorite memories, one I hide away and glance at only when the real stars begin to compare to the ones I saw on that night. Even though it was summer, we lay under blankets to guard against the cold of a sunless sky, and prayed. I prayed for the brokeness I'd seen in people, in lives, in all these problems around us, staring into a sky so untouched by it all. I can believe it, you know, when I'm looking at the stars, that there's something bigger than all the things that tie us to this tiny little planet. It's awesome and awful, to look and think of these objects so distant from us, yet powerful enough to remind us nightly of their existence. They're a beautiful, beautiful reminder of the things in the universe that we can't own, can't touch, can't steal, can't ruin. We can only block them out, forget to be reminded, stop our children from seeing the grandeur of the sky they've inherited.

I used to think knowing the constellation stories would ruin the sky for me. If I knew the pictures others had seen, I would lose the ability to see my own stories up there. But as I lay on the train and watch the sky change as we rounded a corner, I picked out the Bigger Dipper and then the rest of Ursa Major, then  Ursa Minor, then Draco. I waited for the sky to turn again to better see Lyra or Aquilla or Cygnus.

For thousands of years, people have seen these stars. People from every culture have told stories about the things they see in the sky above them, the stars being so constant a company of companions as to become ordinary. For thousands more, a sky like this will hide behind our clouds of light, blocking us from this universal sharing. We'll forget. And we'll be quite surprised when we see it again. Amazed. Awed.

And so, in a way, the nighttime sky, this plethora of stars against the black, is like the Church. The real Church, the functioning Body of Christ that the early followers of Jesus heard about from a converted Jew named Paul. For many years, there were stories told, dots connected among the truths we knew. Learning continued, and other people saw the dots connected in a different way, but the tradition of the learning grew and the studying continued. Then we allowed it to become clouded by the things we've created, and so we've blocked out the things that might be shared by all, the good and wonderful things that remind us of our place in all the bigness that is out there. And it amazes us when we see it again, when we see the Church actually working among the churches.

But it doesn't much matter which stories you learned from the sky. I don't think any one grouping of stars is any more correct than another. It's all we've got, really, the ways we reflect ourselves in the black. And I don't feel so afraid anymore about knowing more about the stories people told. I knew where I was going in the sky as I found my familiar constellations, but I was still left to wonder about the many more hiding amist the black. There's so many things left to learn, so many stories to tell, to teach, to share.

The Church in the Sky.