Love, the Star

 

People, Look East: verse 4

Advent 4 / Year C

Since the dawn of time we humans have been looking up at the stars in the night sky with a sense of wonder, majesty, and awe.  Various early cultures all over the globe, from the Phoenicians to the Chinese to the Inca and more, observed the stars with such intensity they began to discern circular patterns and fixed constants.  Each civilization created star maps of varying accuracy, some able to predict eclipses, comets, and various other celestial events.  Ancient and mysterious structures, from the pyramids in Egypt to Stonehenge in England to Mayan temples, were sited to align with solar events like the solstice. 

For millennia, the movement of stars (which actually don’t move at all) served to guide daily life as well as religious beliefs.  From the night sky people determined the most optimal time to plant and to harvest.  In the multiple constellations human beings deduced mythological figures and celestial gods whose reach affected affairs here on earth.  Given star maps represented a synthesis of science, agriculture, and spirituality, each culture imbued these works with the highest level of artistic expression available to its age and setting.

The Romans were among the first to produce cartography which, using stars, allowed navigators to determine their location and thus were able to chart a course with impressive precision.  This understanding opened new sea routes, expanded trade, and facilitated military expeditions.  In our hemisphere, latitude was easily determined by the position of the North Star.  Longitude was a more vexing challenge not completely resolved until John Harrison developed a chronometer 1761, which told time at sea, vastly simplifying complex calculations. 

Perhaps you are aware the Naval Academy required celestial navigation (one of its most demanding courses) to be taught until 1998 when it was removed from the required curriculum.  Citing concerns about the potential for the GPS system to go down or be hacked, it was reinstated in 2015.  Beyond midshipmen, it is worth noting several species of animals, birds, and fish, mysteriously utilize the stars to direct migrational behavior. 

Today’s verse from People, Look East, which we sang moments ago, focuses our attention on a star:

Stars, keep the watch.

  When night is dim

  one more light the bowl shall brim,

Shining beyond the frosty weather,

  bright as sun and moon together.

People, look east and sing today:

  Love, the star, is on the way. 

The hymn uses a star as a metaphor for God’s love which, like a fixed star, will point the way for us to travel through life.  Love, the star is an unchanging value and virtue from which we can orient and navigate no matter what conditions and challenges we face.  Are you familiar with carol Star of Hope?  Set to a deeply soulful tune, these are its lyrics:

Star of hope, star of love

   shine down from afar.

You’re the one guiding light

   no matter where we are.

Through the valley of tears

   through the long, dreary years

   you’re the star up there, star of hope.

From heaven above

   let each beam guide our dream

   leading to hope and love.

A deep and abiding sense of hope is not just an option for the tool belt we use to draw on through life.  It is absolutely essential for our very well-being.  Social theorists tell us how we think directly influences how we feel, and how we feel directly influences how our body reacts, and how our body reacts directly influences how we behave, and how we behave comes to define who we are and how we experience life.  So, what we think is the bedrock on which everything else is built. 

If your core belief is set upon hope you will engage the world in a way very different than, say, someone whose center is dominated by fear, or by cynicism, or by a paradigm of reward and punishment.  To draw on the language of today’s hymn, we all need to choose a star to use as the object on which we orient our lives.  People, Look East proclaims a new star is on the way and it will shine brighter than every other object vying for our attention.

One final thought, most of us come to the star of Love through the witness of another person who lives it out for us to see.  We call this person a role model.  When we are young we may adopt the look and language of an athlete or a celebrity, but the people closest to us have the most enduring influence on us.  It may be a member of our family or a teacher or a coach, whoever the role model may be, this person shapes us in the moment and becomes a lasting influence on us throughout our lives.  Our role models do more than teach through their words and deeds, we sense they care about us because they listen to us and are genuinely empathetic.  And while they may correct us, we know they respect us.  We observe everything about them in the same way we observe the location and movement of an orienting star.  Their Christ-like life shapes and guides us. 

God-willing, somehow, someway, in time, as we get older we will be a guiding star for someone else.  So people, look east because love, the star is on the way.