The light that remains

On lostness and the steadiness of stars

A few days ago I was listening to the most recent episode of the Good Faith podcast. The host, Curtis Chang, was interviewing Russell Moore. I was intrigued as they circled around the topic of lostness, something specifically named in the title of Moore’s new book, “Losing our Religion.”¹ Chang brought up lostness in reference to the drift of Christianity in America into something far less shaped by the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and far more shaped by political/institutional power and posturing. One question Moore mentioned caught my attention: “You do have to ask, ‘what caused us to become lost,’ but more importantly, ‘what caused us to become lost when we didn’t know it?’” At that point the podcast began functioning as background noise to my own mental journey of associations.

Several years ago I spent a few months studying the very short book of Jude. It was a season where I was reading more poetry than ever before and more eager to press into the mystery of metaphor wherever I found it. I was more willing to ask honest questions of the biblical text and more ready to let it speak to me, rather than assuming I already knew the answers. There was one sentence in Jude 12-13 that especially captivated my imagination (and still does), partially because of the abundance of poetic metaphors and partially because those metaphors were so foreign that they required discipline and study to understand them.

These [false teachers] are hidden reefs at your love feasts, as they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves; waterless clouds, swept along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up the foam of their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

It is admittedly a bit niche to get stuck on a section of scripture that so obscurely describes false teachers, but I still can’t get enough of the lush language— “Hidden reefs… waterless clouds… fruitless trees… wild waves… wandering stars.” Each of these metaphors deserve to be patiently unpacked. Each have agrarian or nautical origins— rich, living images overflowing with meaning. But the one that really caught my attention was the last one: wandering stars.

“Starry Night,” by Vincent Van Gogh, 1889

To the naked eye, stars are fixed points of light in the night sky. As the globe habitually pivots into dark the stars remain predictable, trackable, trustworthy. They have always been essential for accurate navigation, a celestial source of anchored wisdom. Even if a sailor is blown off course, the stars reorient him towards safe harbor: they are steady, a faithful set of guiding lights.

How dangerous, then, would it be to chart a course by lights that are not fixed, like the lights of an orbiting satellite? How truly disorienting to think you’ve picked something firm to follow, only you find out too late how drastically the course has shifted and how much danger you are in? These were not stars at all, you realize, as the ship breaks apart on the rocky shore. You were lost, but you did not know it— until now.

Though light pollution gives modern city-dwellers the illusion that the stars are dim and distant, even outdated, they silently stream their ancient and persistent wisdom upon even the most ignorant of human beings. They remain majestically present for those who choose to be still and to behold, those who choose to discern between what is moveable and what has remained a worthy system of navigation across the generations.

What causes us to become lost when we do not know it? Do we anchor ourselves to things that do not remain? Maybe we need to take a moment to get our bearings— get out of the infiltrating blur of our preferred noise, crowds, chaos. Maybe we need to look up, to be still, to feel above “the day-blind stars // waiting with their light;”² to feel small, even scared in our smallness; to allow ourselves to be cosmically and honestly known, and to find ourselves cosmically and honestly loved. To remember: “Now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known. Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love— but the greatest of these is love.”³

1. Which I have not read

2. From “The Peace of Wild Things,” by Wendell Berry

3. 1 Corinthians 13:12b-13, CSB