The sky at night: Neil Morgan’s Thought for the Week

‘This is my attempt to describe the expansion of one’s vision.’

Life often seems to be about solving a series of down-to-earth problems. One day you’re working out how to pay the car tax, the next you’re planning the new school run, or fixing the dripping tap. At times, however, the horizon can shift. Contrast, for example, the experience of looking at the sky during daytime, and then later, at night. 

In the daytime, the sky is quite close, and full of things: different cloud patterns, or the condensation-trails of often-noisy aircraft. It can sometimes appear to be a constrained, closed-in universe, a bit like a fishbowl. In the evening, however, all this disappears, and the stars appear. In the dark you may not be able to see the shed at the bottom of the garden, even if its only a few yards away. But if you look up, you can see for millions and millions of miles. Unless one is quite cynical or hardened to such things, it can be an amazing sight, and a moving experience. And anyone can do it. 

This is my attempt to describe the expansion of one’s vision.

‘In the dark you can’t see the shed at the bottom of the garden. But if you look up you can see for millions and millions of miles.'

Of course, with a cold eye, you may not be affected at all – ‘They’re just stars, so what?’. And that voice does have a point. I want to suggest, however, that at other times it can seem rather extraordinary. It can conjure up a new mood, and lead to a different sort of reflection – a different angle or take on things. 

Personally, I start to feel different sorts of questions bubbling up inside me. I think of these not as ‘how’ questions (‘How do I fix this tap?’) but as ‘why’ questions (‘Why does all this exist?’). These may not be scientific, but I can’t help it, looking up there. 

Why does all this exist, and why does looking at these stars leave me trying to make sense of it all? Come to think of it, why am I even able to be here, at just this moment in time, so that I can do this? And why does it matter as much as I think it does? 

I don’t think I’m alone, either. On a starry night, lots of us can be taken up by such wonder-ings. 

These ‘why’ questions, in distinction to the ‘how’ questions of science, are, of course, spiritual and religious. They have no easy – or even any – answers that we can grasp. They don’t take that form. They are better presented as mysteries, perhaps, than problems waiting to be solved. 

But that’s no reason not to ask them. In certain moments, we cannot help ourselves. We ask them because we are human. 

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