The late, great humorist, George Carlin, played a weatherman named Al Sleet, The Hippy, Dippy Weatherman. His most famous forecast for the night was, “Dark. Continued dark overnight. With widely scattered light by morning.” Of course, that forecast proves true every night, and especially on “moonless” nights. Yet, those of us who live in modern urban/suburban places never experience true darkness, or what ancients called thick darkness.
Our loss of the experience of darkness is significant. Without the experience of darkness, we lose the true appreciation of light. That loss even includes the blurring of the stark difference between good and evil, for which light and dark are symbols. For the purposes of this blog, I want to stress another loss when we lose real darkness. We lose our sense of the wonder of the night sky.
For ancient peoples, likely dating back much farther than we previously imagined, fascination, even obsession, with the night sky dominated their lives. Amazing, and very ancient megalithic (great stone) structures were oriented to gaze at certain stars (particularly Sirius) and constellations (Particularly Orion’s Belt) in the dark, night sky. Or they were set to mark horizon points of sunrises and sunsets throughout the year.
To be sure, they mixed astronomy with astrology, and misunderstood much. It seems that many imagined a flat earth, covered by a dome. What they never imagined, that only some today absurdly imagine, is that the universe exists without a cause. Our loss of darkness insulates us from such an absurdity.
Listen to a Biblical ancient voice in a Psalm attributed to David:
Psalm 19: 1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world. (NIV)
How can our age deny what the Psalmist proclaims? Part of the answer to that question is that we have also lost a sense of nothingness. Many years ago, I read a philosophy textbook written by an atheist who proposed that empty space coagulated to form the elements of the universe. He was serious…maybe desperate. But empty space is not nothing. Space, empty or full, is something. I can’t imagine empty space coagulating, nothing coagulating is not only unimaginable, it’s impossible. Nothing is nothing and produces nothing.
Nothing is a hypothetical concept for us because we exist and exist in something. That something, our universe, is amazing and complex. It follows laws that make our existence possible. For the Psalmist it is also declarative and declares its maker, our Creator, God. The wonder of the night sky, that is ironically revealed in darkness, shouts to those with faith the greatness of our Creator.
Throughout much of my life, the churches I knew sang a glorious hymn based on this Psalm. It was written by Joseph Addison (1672-1719), with a marvelous score added later by Franz Joseph Hayden (1732-1809). The hymn, The Spacious Firmament, begins with these lyrics:
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame
Their great Original proclaim. (1)
Sadly, it’s no longer sung anywhere I’ve been, for years. But its message, the message of this Psalm, needs to be sounded. A world who has lost the wonder of the dark night sky, and foolishly imagines that we came from nothing, needs to be challenged by the Psalmist’s truth.
Tim Kelley
(1) For a recording of this hymn by 300 of our Indian sisters and brothers, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8cARtRBFco