A simple way of thanking God for the beauty of creation is to look at the twinkling thicket of stars at night. Our urban skies are not always promising, but in the clarity of the countryside this celestial canopy wraps itself around us and tucks us in, blanketing us in soft ribbons of light.

Gazing upwards, I am put in my place, humbled, awed and thankful. I am stilled and gentled, re-graced as my mind tries to grasp the magnificent enormity of deep space and its constant expansion. It is way beyond my reckoning and the best I can do is to let it be, accepting that there are simply some things that are incontrovertibly true, beyond imagining.

I become a child of the universe, at peace and prayerful, mindful of light years and the memory of the moon and the embroidered cloths of heaven and the unfurling of human history over millennia. I am also an Earthling, happily resident on this tilting blue planet.

I am a creature made of stardust and soul, one merely of the billions who have existed or do or will exist. My life may not be recorded in the great chronicles of achievement, but I am known and loved by God, special to him, as all are special in their uniqueness and human dignity.

I like to think I know myself well, but there may yet be aspects awaiting discovery, further avenues that elicit new ways of thinking and being in tune with a self demystified. The lessons of the years hold me steady, but I am not stuck. There is still room for ebb and flow, the time and tide of revelation that reveals bright new things.

Psalm 139: 13-16, strikes a beautiful balance between the mystery of who we are and the days of our lives. “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

I love this description of the possibility of every life, the secret self that God has always known and the secret self we need to acknowledge and awaken, as we journey towards the light of inner knowing. Each of us has been written into the book of days, whilst the sprinkle of stars from dusk till dawn companion us at night.

I love the moon and stars for their constancy, their tender voyeurism. They watch over us; the moon our neighbourly nightlight; the stars vigilant and glittering in their multitude. They are our sentinels, inviting us to a sacred space within and without. We look up in wonder and gratitude at the velvet swatch of sky and are enthralled by a sense of belonging.

We are at home here under the Milky Way.