Tuesday, August 20, 2013

OF THE HALE-BOPP COMET AND OTHER WANDERING STARS . . .

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/


I know I have written about this before to my friends and family . . . but maybe not here on FB -- I can't remember . . . but my oldest grand son was born during the last visitation by the Hale-Bopp Comet in the Spring of 1997, and if you stood at night several feet inside, in front of the doorway of the entrance to the church building of one of the first congregations I served, in Summit Point, West Virginia, you were facing directly west and a view of the comet was perfectly framed.

It looked a bit like this image taken by someone in the general area (astronomically speaking) -- Middleburg, Virginia:

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/comet/gif/rout3.jpg

I know this because on Maundy Thursday after our observance of Jesus' last Passover supper with His beloved disciples and supporters before his Passion and Resurrection, we were coming out of the sanctuary, and the door was open to the beautiful night graced with the gentle light of the waning moon that would become full when the vernal equinox occurred on March 20th that year, and Easter Sunday was on the 30th.

You didn't have to be an astronomer to notice that there was a very special bright star in the sky that night. And from West Virginia its tail was very visible. Nevertheless, because of cloud cover, and not being that aware of its existence, the first time I saw Hale-Bopp was at that moment when the last of us were leaving the church building and locking up for the night before Good Friday.

It was an especially memorable Holy Week for me because that was my first Liturgical year while serving as a pastor, and I was about to become a grandmother for the first time.

Of course a lot of children were born on Earth under the light of that cosmic phenomenon, but certainly the most precious one to me was Noah.

The reason I started thinking about all this was that I went to sleep around 12:45am, and another wandering star, my grandson, Seth, woke me up at 2:07am. One of the first things he said to me was that he wanted to finish watching an episode of "Wipeout" that he hadn't been able to finish watching On Demand before he had to head to bed for story time.

I told him, "No," and brought him back to his bed. But around 3 am he was back again.

Hope we can both fall asleep again, and be dreaming again soon!

:-)