"Or up, among the stars!"

The morning sky continues to speak to me. The Hebrew Testament lessons for Morning Prayer are from Job and Job and his friends just wallow in misery and I want to yell “Get on with it!” but when I start walking with my four legged companion, Yoda, I am cast into wonder with the stars. It reminds me of the lines from Cyrano:

Antoine Comte de Guiche: As for you sir, have you read "Don Quixote"?
Cyrano de Bergerac: I have, and found myself the hero.
Antoine Comte de Guiche: Be so good as to read once more the chapter of the windmills...
Cyrano de Bergerac: Chapter thirteen!
Antoine Comte de Guiche: Windmills, remember, if you fight with them... may swing round their huge arms and cast you down into the mire!
Cyrano de Bergerac: Or up, among the stars!

These last several days in the pre-dawn hours, the Crescent Moon has been guiding my way along with Venus, Jupiter, Castor and Pollux. The stars and the planets have been in the wrong place to look like the symbol for Islam – the Crescent Moon and Star symbol goes back centuries before Islam- but looking at the Moon with Venus in the wrong place I was called to remember the tension we Christians have with Islam Yesterday was 9-11 and we remembered what happens when fanatics use their religion to promote hate. 

This morning we look at the attacks on US diplomatic stations in Libya and Egypt claiming as provocation by some Christians who used their fanaticism to attack the memory of the Prophet. One fanatic uses religion to attack another fanatic who then has to retaliate because the honor of their faith is impugned. And all the time the stars of the one God of us all look down on us calling us to look and be filled with awe and us ignore them, more determined to be “right” than loving.  

I need the stars to remind myself that I cannot wallow in the mire taking myself too seriously when I can be flung to the stars.