really enlivens a sunny day. Today the rain fell, and we are predicted to get so much more rain this weekend. I drive into glorious sunsets so many times a year, and, other than a bit of wonder, think very little of them indeed. But now, when the rain is upon us, I miss the sunsets terribly.
I look into the sky at night, and marvel that I have seen Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Venus in the same sky at the same timne, not that far from Orion's belt. It might all be a Fifth Dimension song.
I love starry nights and blue skies. But tonight I remember my favorite hymn, Lloyd Stone's lyric set to Sibelius' Finlandia:
"My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace
for their land and for mine".
Even this lyric doesn't work for lots of people, because they do not believe in the "God" of this song, believing instead in no God or in a different God. Flawed though the song is as a "universal" idea (and Heaven knows we have enough folks trying to force dogma onto other folks, cutting across almost every system of belief), though, I like the idea that the sky is blue in so many places, and the sun rises and sets everywhere.
I feel that we are entering a time in which the sun will for a long time seem not to rise, and during which the skies will be grey. I hope that we avert the shadow, and return to rising and setting suns. We may not know how much we miss the sun until we are plunged into the dark.