Monday August 1 — “here come the stars”
Yesterday, I wrote the account of my travel home from vacation for two soul friends who live in Detroit. It turned into a card honoring St. Ignatius whose feast day was yesterday. I sent it to 4 or 5 other friends. This morning, it has become a journal entry for the first day of the work year, a good way to frame Robert Frost’s wonderful celebration of stars in today’s poem.
“About driving home from vacation around Lake Michigan’s northern edge”
As in the last 4-5 years, dinner with my sister Mary began my end-of-summer ritual in our home town, Marinette, WI, where Upper Michigan and Wisconsin meet on the short of Lake Michigan: to bed c. 10:00 pm; on the road by 2:10 am or so; stopped 32 miles up along the Northwest shore of Lake Michigan at a little beach (Fox Point); walked c. 40 ft to the shore and stood by that immense body of water gazing at the 27,534,210 stars in a vast clear sky (no clouds and almost zero artificial ground light) with a sliver moon hanging out over the north end of the Lake, praying the Lakota prayer of the six directions as a goodbye to summer and a welcome to my work year.
Last year about an hour south of the big bridge (Mackinac), I got very sleepy at the wheel, enough that I stopped at every rest stop all the way to Detroit. Not very fun. This year I asked Norm Dickson, sj — good friend, 20+ years working in the south of Sudan, now pastor of the little parish of Kalkaska (c. 90 min south of the big bridge) — if I could stop and take a nap. Yes, of course. I checked out the parish garden (huge and to die for beautiful, 25 parish vols) and the church (unpretentious and lovely) and dove into a 2 hour wonderful nap. Result? A much more relaxed drive from the big bridge to McNichols Road.
Best to read the poem out loud, with pauses. Welcome to 2016-17.
john sj
Today’s Post Robert Frost
“The Literate Farmers and the Planet Venus”
Here come the stars to character the skies,
And they in the estimation of the wise
Are more divine than any bulb or arc,
Because their purpose is to flash and spark,
But not to take away the precious dark.
We need the interruption of the night
To ease attention off when overtight,
To break our logic in too long a flight,
And ask us if our premises are right
Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963
