Laughing Beneath the Meteors

What was it about the written reminiscence that made it so appealing?  Why could I so easily identify with the firsthand experience that was being described, and with the inner feeling the writer remembered?  It was a recollection by a poet in his twenties, thinking back to an occasion of nighttime camaraderie with peers:

"Some day I must tell how we sang, shouted, whistled, and danced through the dark lanes....  and how we laughed till the meteors showered round us,

 and we fell calm under the winter stars.

 And some of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time.

 And seeing it so far above us, and feeling the good road so safe beneath us,

 we praised God with louder whistling...."

As I read this recollection, I almost wished I were there myself.  The cool night air.  The feeling of relaxation among friends.  The happiness and contentment.  The star-filled sky above.  The wonder of a sudden meteor shower.

Even as relaxing and restorative as those things were, there was also a deeper layer that gently emerged.  It seemed to have to do with that experience young people can have when they feel their youthful idealism beginning to be channeled into the paths of their individual identities:

"[S]ome of us saw the pathway of the spirits for the first time."

I felt as if I knew those subjective emotions because I had experienced them myself at that stage of adolescence:  The paradox of joyful freedom despite not knowing what the future will hold. The only thing I had not experienced as such was the meteor shower.  But I still felt as if I could understand the meaning of what the author described.  Today, in our U.S. popular culture, such things as meteors get mentioned mostly in the form of the fear that a massive asteroid might hit the Earth, bringing devastation.  Modern science also tells us that our sun will eventually burn out, bringing death to the Earth.  Terrifying scenarios caused by uncontrollable events in outer space abound (guaranteeing work for screenwriters of disaster movies).  In contrast, the young poet remembers laughing with his companions as the meteors rained down.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

The reminiscence has a power of its own.  But it is given added poignancy by knowing that it was written by the British poet Wilfred Owen, who died at the age of 25, fighting in World War I.  Owen's war poems have a sensitivity of feeling not unlike that which is revealed in this reminiscence, shared by letter with a friend the year before Owen was killed in battle.

To me, the reminiscence, even as brief as it is, conveys an experience of belonging.  The combination of the companionship of friends and the surrounding realm of Nature convey a sense of ultimate belonging.  Wilfred Owen is now gone.  But nighttime is still cooler than the day. Overhead, there are still stars.  And there is still, I am sure, at least one more shooting star ready to be seen as it pierces the air we breath.

~~~

Have you ever experienced a moment of deep contentment while you were in Nature?

(Owen's reminiscence is quoted in "Memoir (1931)" by Edmund Blunden,

in the Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, © 1963.  p. 172.)

(The photograph of Owen is in the Public Domain because its copyright has expired.)

Darkness

waning moon

I did not myself notice a possible meaning in the way the prayer was worded.  So, at first I thought the Iroquois prayer was a simple prayer of gratitude, perhaps used at bedtime to relieve anxiety about the night ahead:

"Great Spirit who puts us to sleep in darkness,

We thank thee for the silences of darkness."

I had even liked saying the prayer, finding that it helped bring upon me a grateful spirit, so as to overcome worried thoughts about the day ending or the day to come.

But one day my wife made a comment that made me see in the prayer a possible added dimension.  She said, "It implies that the night has more than one silence."  Indeed, the wording was plural:  "silences of darkness."  I had taken the plural to refer merely to the many nighttimes we experience, one following the other, periods of darkness separated by each day.  But could the prayer's idea be that each night has more than one silence?

The image of a series of silences brought back to me the first night my wife and I camped in a state park in east Texas.  Taking longer than usual to get to sleep because of the unfamiliar feel of the air mattress on the uneven ground, my ears were particularly sensitive to the unfamiliar sounds of Nature around me.  As I tried to drop off, my mind was brought back to keen attention with each click or scrape or seeming moan I heard.  What was it?  Was I safe?  And after I did at last fall asleep, my rest was interrupted time and again by the silence being interrupted by sound (including the local raccoon's making the rounds of the park's trash cans).  Oh, how I would have enjoyed having the night be a single long, uninterrupted silence.

What trust a person would have to have to choose to live in total darkness!  If we imagine not being able to see anything (as many of the legally blind cannot), it should be no surprise that one of the Bible's most powerful symbols for ignorance is darkness.  And the very word "Buddha" is a title meaning "en-lightened one."

Earth's regular darkness

That night camping, however, reminds me that Nature's world is not dead even when people are, as we say, dead to the world.  For many creatures, the night is the time to truly live!  Not just that raccoon, but also bats, moths, and countless other creatures.  The biologist Francisco J. Ayala has described evolution as being "opportunistic." Life on earth began with bacteria that evolved sensitivity to light, followed by plants that required light for photosynthesis.  However, the alternate world of nocturnal life opportunistically evolved the ability to take advantage of darkness.

Darkness is thus essential to this planet's biodiversity.  Moreover, this planet itself would have burned to a crisp on one side long ago if it did not rotate frequently, thus bringing nights of cooling darkness.  We should not be in the dark about the importance of darkness to this Earth.

~~~

How do you use your nights?