Saturn hangs low in a deep dark predawn sky over the ocean. It may as well be the top of the Lighthouse it is so bright. There are no stars to distract from its brilliance. There are no clouds either. The sea is calm. Even the Sun lingers from rising allowing the sixth planet to have its moment.
I stand in the middle of 15th Street and look at it. Even before coffee I feel holy and humbled. It is a good way to start a Sunday. I have this disease where songs are forever popping in my head and as I’m surveying this majesty it happens again … with the strangest song.
Talking to myself
Crying out loud
Only I can hear me
I’m stuck inside a cloud
George Harrison is singing about his death which he knows is coming. He writes about losing motivation; he can’t sleep, can’t eat …never been so crazy … or sure … he wishes he had answers because he knows that there’s no cure. In spite of these feelings, the only thing that matters to him is to “touch your lotus feet” … meaning God.
(Yeah, yeah, yeah {Get it? The Beatles!}… I know he’s talking about Krishna but its God the way that he believed in God. She’s pretty cool about such stuff and doesn’t get hung up in just one way of being …God! I don’t know why the rest of us get so hung up about it.).
Yet I stand there staring at one planet in the sky and everything else gone away leaving it behind … alone. Then the oddest lyrics are running through my mind and a dying man who understands that he is … alone. And I stand in the middle of the street by myself in the quiet of a predawn morning.
I’m a big believer that we listen out for God whom I also think is a big believer in direct communication. Clergy are useful in helping us understand a lot of things but in the end it’s just us and God.
Standing there under the brightest Saturn I’ve ever seen, in a deep dark sky absolutely devoid of anything else with a dying George Harrison running through my brain …
Looking to my right into the large windows of the Breakfast Club, I see my friends busy preparing for what is surely to be a busy day. Then I turn away from them for a few more minutes to … listen. I think that hearing God sometimes, though certainly not always, means just focusing on what is happening around you.
I stop and pray one of the simplest yet mightiest of prayers …
“What are you telling me?”
My mind suddenly explodes in images all rushing together as though I’m watching a montage of pictures flash almost simultaneously. They are my pictures. Things start going wrong at work. Things start going wrong at home. My Dad dies. I start losing myself. Others ask me to give them more than I already have which was everything. Then my wife leaves. Then I leave my career. And then …
I’m alone. With a dog named Goddess.
Homeless people have been my friends throughout my whole career. They’d often arrive seeking shelter with everything that had in a bag (a homeless suitcasw is a plastic Piggly Wiggly bag) and, in many cases, a dog. Shelters do not allow dogs and I often witnessed a homeless man or woman turn their eyes away from hearing this news and wistfully sigh, “OK thanks anyway,” and walk away with the things that they had left. With the only friend they had left.
Thinking these things, I stare at Saturn.
Slowly … ever so slowly … painfully slow … the sun wakes up and rises … joining her brother in the sky. The brilliance of the sun eclipses the beauty of a planet and joins it invites it to dance.
I laugh. God joins those who of us who are left behind just as the sun rises to share the sky with the only thing left in it this morning. They dance against a blue black drop that grows increasingly paler. And I get the message.
We’re never really alone.
Even when we’re dying! And there are so many ways to die … literally … but also in a marriage … a job …a family … a place … so many ways …
I’ve certainly watched a lot of things die in my life over the past few years … and big pieces of me died too …
But … miraculously I somehow hung around … alone … like a lone star in the sky …
Just when I thought that I couldn’t stand it anymore, the sun rose and joined me.
The loneliness faded. I was no longer alone.
I blow God a kiss of thanks.
Then I walk into the Breakfast Club and a new day begins.
