The Grand Conjunction Through The Eyes of Faith

Faith is the substance of things hoped for

December 21, 2020, came and went and the planets knew nothing of our excitement. The clockwork orrery of heaven moves as if it has no bearing on mere mortals on Earth. But at times, those motions above and events below do align, and we give those moments a special place in our history and our stories.

The Grand Conjunction: I showed up. I was earnest. I was prepared. I was crestfallen.

Clouds scattered and thinned around 4 o'clock on December 21, 2020, and I was giddy. It was going to work out after all. I checked again to be sure my tripod-mounted camera was set to fire 2 seconds after I pressed the shutter. All other settings were just as I had adjusted them the night before, using as a star stand-in the lights on the house on Panther Knob.

And then the clouds poured back in, a thin veneer at first, then thick as plaster.

I took out my phone and pointed Sky Safari towards the point in the heavens where Jupiter and Saturn were in their closest visual proximity from Earth at night in hundreds of years. That would be my record and my memory of this celestial event of a lifetime.

I was there. And I knew just where it would be and when because trusting the mathematics of science, I believed I would see it. I had faith.

There was a time many decades ago when I first grappled with the fact (as told to me by sources that I trusted) that even when the sun was not visible to me, it was still there, up above the clouds.

At about this same time, I was asked to believe that in the daytime the stars did not "go out" but were obscured by the stronger light of the sun--which at night time did not snuff out like a candle flame to be rekindled at dawn the next day.

That was a lot to wrap my head around when I was four.

But I trusted my sources and have based my understanding on those substantiated matters of faith ever since, having seen the clouds below me from an airliner and the curve of the round Earth beyond.

The Christmas Star that I did not see may be a re-enactment of the Star of Bethlehem or not.

But its appearing unseen on the turning-point solstice of this year of the plague as I stood in the cold dark staring at the clouds reminded me of the sources I have trusted, the faith that has sustained me, and the hope of peace--if only in one heart, for at least the new year we face with hope, together.