Today I Give Thanks for the Stars

Today I give thanks for the stars.  This morning, I woke up to see the Big Dipper, and it appeared close enough that I could reach out and touch it.  There was a cruise ship out on the horizon, and a small plane circled the mountains to land at a nearby airport.  All of it – the ocean, the volcanic hills and mountains, the ship, the plane, and me – we were all somehow anchored by the steady presence of those stars.

 

In generations past, our ancestors used stars to guide them.  Two and a half millennia ago, people from what is now Indonesia sailed across the Pacific Ocean to populate Tahiti and later Hawaii.  And in our own country, enslaved people followed the stars forming a “drinking gourd” along waterways and over mountains, northward to freedom.  These people formed strong communities and founded new lives for themselves and their descendants. 

 

Christopher Columbus used the North Star and a quadrant to cross the Atlantic Ocean, trying to find a different route to India and spices and gold.  He landed instead on this Island, Puerto Rico, during his second voyage, torturing and enslaving the gentle Taino people.  His horrific actions landed him in front of a Spanish tribunal, yet he died a free and very wealthy man.  But at what cost to our future?  Today we still must reckon with consequences of the centuries of horrific colonialism Columbus set in motion.

 

Who and what are our guiding stars today?  By following them, what are we seeking?  And what kind of a future are we creating?  These are the questions I find myself grappling with.

 

So today I give thanks to those stars that, whether they are in the sky or are within the people and ideas here on earth, anchor us to what is real today and guide us to what will be tomorrow.  May we choose our stars wisely!