The Church Lady, Dana Carvey’s mistress of religious ambiguity, is not what I was thinking specifically when that phrase popped into my mind.  It happened early the other morning, about 5:15a.m. to be exact.  I was on my way to church and while winding my way through Van Buren County I spotted a bright orangey light fixed in the southern sky.  As I drove the light stood there, staring.  I would make a turn and look over my shoulder and sort mental files…Saturn?  Mars?  Hmmm, I couldn’t figure it out as it followed me along CR653.  Then a curve adjusted my course to “due south” and the mystery revealed.  A red blinking light appeared.  A plane with its turn signal on was heading north slowly.

This has happened before, many times actually.  I often look up in the night sky.  Before I moved to this house every night after work I would crick my neck as I shut my car door before walking into the house.  Now I hit the garage door opener and seal myself into my cocoon and enter into my pod without checking out even the ceiling.  But, that apparent stationary light tricked me.  Optical allusion, as they say, led me to believe a planet hung in the pre dawn canopy.  The solution would have been easy.  Just stop the car for a minute and stare back.  The truth would reveal without the trees moving past and rolling hills rolling by.   Simple.

In all actuality, if I happen to catch Saturn in the night sky, it too would be on the move but the immense space between Earth and it would make it appear loitering like a macula in the heavens.  A while back in the night I kept waking up.  Just my eyes would open and see through the window a bright star just above the pines.  Each time my lids parted the star would be a little closer to the frame until eventually it disappeared behind the wall.  Everything was moving…even as I slept.  I know. I know. Einstein had this figured out years ago, not to mention other neck-crickers centuries ago.

A while ago I heard a preacher describe the universe with large mathematical terms.  A star’s light, aided by the speed of light, hundreds of thousands of miles per second has been traveling since before the birth of Christ just to shine in the night over our town.  I watched a video once that started with a camera shot over someone’s back yard and panned out and out and out until my mind was spaced-out with unfathomable spatial gaps between one orb, our cute little earth, and a sun similar to our own beyond, up, and over the rainbow of the galaxies.

I once stated that I am not a theologian.  For the record now I will say that I am NOT a scientist.  I am just a fifty year old kid trying to keep my imagination and wonder from sitting in a rocking chair to watch Wheel of Fortune.  Did you know that the word universe means “One Song.”  Yeah.  Those in the new age movement give the universe its own personhood by using that definition.  Just a thought…when I listen to the night skies with my eyes…I think, “Who wrote this?  Who is singing this wonderful tune?”  Who?