For generations unnumbered, human beings have searched the night sky for meaning. Our ancestors discerned the forms of animals, heroes and gods in clusters of stars. Some went even further, imagining that the alignment of stars and planets on babies\u2019 birthdays somehow hinted at what their lives would be like. On the zodiac, I was born under Leo the Lion.\u00a0 As a Leo, I was destined to have a magnetic personality and to be charismatic and vivacious.\u00a0 Hmm. Well, perhaps I wasn\u2019t born in August after all.<\/p>\n

But it was indeed the movement and alignment of a star that caused the magi to journey to Judea. Whether or not they were priests of Persia\u2019s ancient Zoroastrian religion, as some suspect, it seems clear they were also astrologers. Matthew\u2019s account of the star moving, then hovering over Bethlehem is likely his astronomically-naive account of an astrological reading. This is not to say, of course, that the Bible puts any stock in astrology: Matthew seems to understand the star\u2019s behavior as a miracle rather than celestial science.<\/p>\n

Humanity\u2019s ancient and enduring fascination with the starry heavens could soon be endangered, though. The culprit:\u00a0light pollution<\/em>. Astronomers have long had to cope with encroaching artificial light from streetlights, car headlights and advertising signs. They\u2019ve learned to locate observatories on barren mountaintops in remote locations, far from the nighttime glow of urban and suburban sprawl.<\/p>\n

If you hike into the mountains of Colorado you\u2019ll see just how bright the stars actually are.\u00a0 On a cloudless night you can walk around at 3 a.m. without a flashlight and clearly see the pathway in front of you. Add a full moon to the picture, and the way before you is even clearer.<\/p>\n

There are actually dark-sky preserves at various remote locations around the world, even in the United States. Some of the great national parks in the West bear this designation including parts of Grand Canyon, Death Valley and Joshua Tree. For urban people \u2014 perpetually dazzled by the glare of streetlights and headlights \u2014 traveling to one of these starlit locations is a revelation.<\/p>\n

But now, even the most remote telescopes may have difficulty scanning the heavens, and dark-sky preserves could become a thing of the past. The problem is still artificial light: but now the light is coming from a different place: the sky itself.<\/em><\/p>\n

The SpaceX Company has started launching not just single satellites into orbit, but great orbiting arrays. Last summer, the company launched an array of sixty 500-pound satellites into orbit. Eventually it plans to place thousands of these mini-satellites into the night sky. The plan is to bounce radio signals off them to improve Internet access here on Earth.<\/p>\n

But radio signals are not the only thing that bounces off these satellites. Each of them is powered by solar panels, and these panels not only collect sunlight for their photovoltaic cells: they also reflect some of that light back to Earth.<\/p>\n

Amateur stargazers can already glimpse these new workhorses of the Internet, trudging like a pack train across the night sky, right in front of familiar constellations. The SpaceX people have gone so far as to describe their handiwork as a new constellation. They call it Starlink.<\/p>\n

Starlink satellites are tiny, of course, compared to the size of real stars \u2014 many of which are larger than our own sun. But they\u2019re a lot closer. A 500-pound satellite in low Earth orbit can appear brighter than a gas giant thousands of light years away.<\/p>\n

Astronomers and amateur stargazers are not amused. They\u2019re rallying to oppose these new plans.<\/p>\n

For a long time, astronomers have had to discard a fair number of photos taken through their telescopes, because a traditional satellite or even the International Space Station entered the frame, thus rendering the photo useless. Now, though, as hundreds \u2014 and, soon, thousands \u2014 of mini-satellites show up in their field of view, they\u2019re afraid it may become impossible to snap a photo of the natural sky. They\u2019ll no longer be able to see the real stars they\u2019re looking for, because so many artificial ones get in the way.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk has defended his company\u2019s plans as being \u201cfor the greater good\u201d \u2014 supplying Internet access all over the world \u2014 but some astronomers are asking, \u201cWhose<\/em>\u00a0greater good?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho has the right to decide that?\u201d asks Dr. Tyler Nordgren, one of the astronomers questioning the SpaceX plans. The night sky has the power to make people feel awe, he points out: \u201cA star-filled night sky reminds us that we are part of a much larger whole, that we are one person in a world of people surrounded by the vast depths of the visible universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the feeling experienced by the magi of old: \u201cWhere is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.\u201d<\/p>\n

We know little about the Bethlehem star \u2014 what sort of astronomical configuration, exactly, may have excited the attention of those learned Persian stargazers \u2014 although, of course, there are many fascinating theories. But we don\u2019t need to understand the science behind the phenomenon, though, to grasp the luminous feeling of awe that spills over to our earthly spirits as we contemplate the heavens.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve just come out of a Christmas season filled with glowing distractions of all kinds: all the trappings of the secular holiday we know so well. First there were jingle bells, then juggled bills. These lesser constellations in the night sky of our faith are not bad things, in and of themselves, but we all know they have the potential to turn our gaze away from things that truly matter.<\/p>\n

When the magi gazed up into the heavens, plotting their star-charts, the backdrop to the Bethlehem star was every bit as dark as the sky still is above the Grand Canyon or Death Valley. Yet, what if it had been otherwise?\u00a0What if they\u2019d had to contend with light pollution? What if a string of flashing satellites had commanded their attention instead?<\/em><\/p>\n

So many of the distractions of the secular holiday are like those orbiting satellites \u2014 light pollution obscuring the True Light, the Light of the World. These distractions are cheap, tawdry ornaments encroaching on a glittering Christmas tree filled with family heirlooms. We do well to keep our field of view unobstructed.<\/em><\/p>\n

Way back in 1959, the great Jewish scholar, Abraham Joshua Heschel, had a foreboding of what was to come. In\u00a0his book, Between God and Man<\/em>, he warns: \u201cThe awareness of the grandeur and the sublime is all but gone. \u2026 We teach our children how to measure, how to weigh. We fail to teach them how to revere, how to sense wonder and awe. The sense for the sublime, the sign of the inward greatness of the soul is now a rare gift. Yet without it, the world becomes flat and the soul a vacuum. Here is where the Biblical view of reality must serve as our guide.\u201d<\/p>\n

To remain spiritually healthy, we must pay close attention to what we\u2019re seeing. We must preserve our access to the visions that inspire awe in our hearts.<\/p>\n

The Fault in Our Stars<\/em>\u00a0is the title of a 2004 film about a couple of teenage cancer survivors pursuing life and love. Hazel, one of the pair, refers to Augustus (or Gus) as her \u201cstar-crossed lover.\u201d It\u2019s a famous phrase from Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, of course (the Bard of Avon, like many others of his era, was a fan of astrology). The idea is that the lovers\u2019 tragic fate was somehow written in the stars.<\/p>\n

In a memorable scene from the film, Gus confesses to Hazel: \u201cI am in love with you. And I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we\u2019re all doomed. And that one day all our labor will be returned to dust. And I know that the sun will swallow the only earth we will ever have. And I am in love with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019d like to think the love we share with others on this earth is just as enduring, but considering our lot realistically, we know it to be otherwise. Take a walk through an old graveyard \u2014 one with epitaphs on the stones \u2014 and you\u2019ll see expressions of love from people who haven\u2019t breathed this earthly air for decades, even centuries. Their sentiments, carved in stone, live on, even though their love itself has long since been swallowed up by \u2014 and, we trust, has found perfection in \u2014 the greater and eternal love of God.<\/p>\n

As fascinating as the biblical account of the Bethlehem star is, and as awe-inspiring as are the constellations above a dark-sky preserve,\u00a0it\u2019s not the stars we seek.<\/em>\u00a0The magi weren\u2019t seeking the stars, either, at least not ultimately. They valued their special star merely\u00a0as a pointer to the child born King of the Jews.<\/em><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a fault in our stars \u2014 and not just in that blinking sky-train of satellites that is the Starlink array.\u00a0The fault in our stars is whatever turns our attention from the True Star, the True North Star \u2014 he who is the source of everything good in our lives: Jesus Christ.<\/em><\/p>\n

Let us seek him above all others \u2013 at this Epiphany, and in this new year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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