So how does this failure to gaze at the stars lead to spiritual shortsightedness? I contend that if someone would look at the night sky long enough, that person would eventually realize that we earthlings have, as yet, discovered no other star or planet with intelligent life. Yet perhaps no generation before us has so completely turned away from the night sky for more earthbound matters, such as sports, situation comedies, online poker and Twitter.

No generation before ours has known more about what we see in the night sky and what lies beyond what we can see. The irony of this is that with exploration by space probes we have leaped forward in our knowledge of the vastness of what is in the night sky. We can gain much from these sources of information, but there is also spiritual loss. In our modern world, we have been lured away from this nighttime activity by our preference for TV, the Internet and social media.

Our ancestors routinely studied the stars, and no doubt the starry sky formed the backdrop for numerous stories told by our ancestors around a fire.

That is, we have difficulty seeing the big picture, and the consequence of that difficulty lurks behind all the problems that currently beset us - war, religious terrorism, racism, homelessness, and the debates about climate change, same-sex marriages and health care.Ī useful exercise on a clear night is to arise in the wee hours and venture outside to study the stars. We all suffer from a type of spiritual shortsightedness.

What we see in the stars journal