It is true—I roam my home planet as an odd or peculiar person, perpetually endeavoring to find deep meaning in things. In such a boundless adventure—I often relate to stars in a rather intimate or memorable way. The enigma of a living and dynamic night sky still takes my breath away while dispatching my mind into realms of wonder I once relished as a child. The sheer number of these immense spheres of brilliant fusion energy seems incalculable—but in my older life of more comfortable adherence, my narrow brain still attempts to quantify ledgers with their mystique.

 

Science currently estimates that there are ten thousand stars in the universe for every solitary grain of sand drifting upon our deep blue marble of earth. And while this observation may take some time to fathom, you should know that more time will only boost that count. But inside the clutches of this vast and enduring reckoning—I feel like I am, in a personal sense, their offspring. And in my journeys, it becomes even more necessary for me to seek a real purpose in such a minuscule existence. My dreams within the visible stretches of outer space seem to mirror some microscopic reality within an even more obscure dimension of my inner space. So with this strange introduction—some questions always remain. How do we find our natural place and happiness within this colossal creation? And how does this wonder attest to the acts of a divine and purposeful plan? Regardless, my quest has brought me peace, and I hope your unique path offers similar results.

 

My bones were petrified about their hollow centers from the core elements of starry deaths. My flesh was woven in threads born in the exhausting furnaces of their last dying breaths. The dark sable cinders of sacrificial stars have been vital in forming the building blocks and mass of all life and all things. And this is why I sense a genuine connection to everything. Every plant and animal, all waters, stone, the air we breathe, and the dirt we till, including each of us, is all born of the ancestral sparks of ancient stars. We are the leftovers of enormous solar explosions. But as simple as this explanation seems—there must remain other intricate and intelligent forces—spiritual forces that design, order, shape, and glue these parts and assemblages together to subsequently create a piece of complex machinery with a beautiful and natural purpose.

 

Within this exquisite marvel of perfection, positive entropy and other natural forces can also take a painful toll. But, as we eventually learn, this is part of the plan. The diseases of age and random imperfect distress of time can also play a role in how our spirits become perfected. How our society reacts to deliberate or unexpected suffering becomes a legacy that can define a family or a country. And how we gather together to help others and soften these challenges can define us far beyond our short lives.

 

It is easy to get trapped between the dark lightyears that extend between the effulgence of massive galaxies. For me, it was enhanced by health issues as my body decided years ago to turn against me. In its protest, my bellicose lungs struggle to absorb the oxygen needed to stay active and vibrant. So, while it would have been painless to curse God and die, I chose instead to look to higher lights and powers in my distress and discouragement. As a result, I started a personal collection of rare lanterns that transformed into treasured words. Time and time again, as I found myself submerging in the thick foams of darkness or sighing beneath my sludges of midnight—these crystalline fragments of life and revealed truth have delivered me. Even now—they work to safely guide my dreams along enigmatic astral paths, where the distant stars politely stand back and only judge me in the silhouettes of my unique or strange relativity.

 

In my ordinary humanness—I, like so many, have also experienced challenges of faith and a commitment to devotion. In bouts of depression, I can easily spin in corridors where my words dissolve inside reverberating walls of virtual obsidian. I often share this social media villa with busy ears that will not hear and distracted eyes that will not see the lights that endeavor so hard to reach us. Dins of anger and confusion also mask my inner spirit in its stench of divisive flames. Suffocating texts burned under fat drunken fingers—quivering in an imbibed ignorance of any published and peer-reviewed truth quickly toss their infections of anger and indifference toward me. Their dark verses allow spineless political babble to stretch beyond light years—inflating fears that can crowd the darkest corners of my desolation.

 

My innate desire to touch kindness wanes when my starry maps begin to fade upon colorful tablets of dazzling cynicism. Depression set its stakes in my heart and shrouds much of my spirituality. Angst and anxiety work overtime to consume my dreams. Things became more important than people. And genuine empathy with its companion of love withdraws into the subterranean confines of my doubts and trepidations, drowning me in my own potages of regret. In such a state—I plunge blindly into chasms of my own dark matter and foolishness.

 

Enveloped within the reliable and tender mercy of friends and family, I labor vociferously against time and eventually escape to my secret place and gaze upward—beyond all the dense mists of jade. Through a long, repeated process of detective work, I found some solutions that rescued me from my darkest days. My first step is prayer. Or, in other words—finding ears that listen without a corresponding lecture. Then, I walk out of my room's confines to explore trails showing nature in its multiple shapes, textures, seasons, and splendor. This action brings me better physical health, mental enlightenment, and emotional peace. Volunteering to help in a community, both near and far, frees me from the cold chains of ignorance. Writing about my challenges and conquests eventually became my prescribed drug of choice. Designing, planting, painting, composing, sculpting, or building anything transfers our inner love to an external display of deep satisfaction and pride. And creating is a blessing and pattern we inherit from our Creator. Lastly, and for me, the most difficult as an introvert—locating ample courage to find a friend by first becoming a friend.

 

By relishing each one of my days in a radiant light—I became absorbed in new azimuths of wonder and reverence. Bound behind spheres of magnification, polished in the institutions of learning, I can now peer through the veils of my bouts in descending eventides. In this spiritual and rational renewal, I can soak up life as much as possible, including the holy ethers that paint all the colors upon our tender orb. Yet, as I rediscover the smallness of my mortality, even shrinking as my newly rekindled curiosity expands, I never relent in extending my youthful imagination onward and upward.

 

Applying the standards taught to me that embrace the best of science in this curving reality of space and time—I focused first on the visible lights. Lonely sparks so vastly separated, so detached by unfathomable distance and any visions of each other, I sometimes began to question my own vision. I needed the wisdom to unearth and drink in a more durable or spiritual light, and I further needed the courage to follow a more steady, perfected, and piloting star. I made it my mission to demonstrate that science and religion can become powerful allies. I ultimately achieved enlightenment as science illuminated my mind, and faith inspired my heart. But this was only the beginning. I needed another partner.

 

All my involved passages in time and expeditions in life would have failed had I not been blessed with a soul mate who held the keys to unlock more divine energy. Together we have uncovered a rewarding and enduring victory. We searched in the shadowy sanctums of a life beyond the cold distal sequesters of our steel prisons—and we found each other. We took chances that would have frightened many, but we chose the right and followed the light. We turned the direction of mirrors that once echoed pewter penetrating darkness—to deliver a brighter light of life into every stranded pixel of our beings. Our patient work and love kindled a harmony of eternal progression that rescued us from our hoary quadrangles of loneliness. It rekindled our forgotten and burned-out lighthouse by joining our wandering hearts into one heart. We bypassed the networks that protect mediocrity and provide fleeting pleasure by latching onto a unified hope. And in this longing came the blessings of children and grandchildren.

 

Consumed in this partnership of pristine enlightenment—I could now explore the velvet mysteries of a singular eternity far beyond written or spoken words. I sailed over the weary nebula of time. I tickled the outlines of massive black holes that border our coarser pasts and the expanse of a universe birthed within our universe. Driven by the residue of a supernova of knowledge, I easily penetrated dust clouds from elapsed pasts and primordial futures, where mercy and forgiveness came through a loving God and my angelic partner. Together they directed me onto a course of optimism that reached out a hand of endless and faithful devotion. In this enlightenment—I learned to easily navigate through the sacred and pure snowflakes of a white and spotless redemption.

 

In maturity, I have learned to hover more within ineffable wonders. Entombed in such grace and shivers of the utter vastness—I could hear the indescribable melody of a more elegant and spiritual cosmos. Darkness slowly became a friend as I unlocked its weakness and witnessed the hidden scaffolds of protection that flowed about my inquisitive wings. The rivets that fasten and describe the mathematical language of magnificence slowly folded in upon my old and awkward ego as I began to sense a real purpose in the equations of eternal destiny. I floated a river into the majestic canyons of previously unknown mercy and touched the twisting DNA of every aspect of an interconnected nature. Released from my fears, I could finally converse with a living and a hopeful planet that places its future, responsibility, and faith within each of our futures.

 

As I abandon my pride in the dungeons of my past, I can easily lift my eyes upward and back into the heavens from whence I came. I clearly perceive the countless galaxies wrapped in murmurations of countless stars teeming with flocks of infinitesimal life. Both the visible and the invisible. This radiance seeps through my body and pulses within every fiber of my being. The scintillations once submerged in dark blue inks of my sins now rise in an effervescence of faith. And as I touch upon God's words of grace, my once abysmal soul now walks upon wide illuminated paths of a more celestial destiny.

 

In these splendors of interstellar distances, I finally begin to comprehend myself and all the divine hands within heaven that work for each of us. I have discovered a purpose for such grandeur that was once lost in the oils of my dark saturated pools of greed. As I walk through nature's gift—brewed within a divine reason and spread in layers of unambiguous emotion, I finally appreciate all the endless possibilities. I recognize a complex convergence of miracles that create every other profound light and truth. And as I understand the divine Creator better, I rediscover the lost art of personal creation.

 

It is only now that I finally perceive that this starry light exceeds every possible limit of darkness. Learning and intelligence are infinite in discovery and application. And if we all can accept a valid purpose or value to our own cottage of smallness in this ever-expanding universe—we will also find that we all become larger. As we transform our beings and blend into one unified creature beyond all the earthly material lights, we will discover illumination and nourishment within the immaterial heavenly lights of a paternal and maternal Creator.

 

I began my journey of discovery by lashing onto the lifesaving cords of a dream kindled in the sparks of mercy and hope, feeling like nothing—a speck of dust. But I advanced my arduous voyage by riding upon a starship of revelation, unifying the aspects of faith and science to find a truth that sets me free from all the shallow partitions of time. This freedom leads me to accept my calling or charge to become a minister to every person and a steward to every form of life-giving light upon this small, consecrated island we call home. And to be willing to give some of our sacred freedoms to others is the definition of true freedom.

 

So—when our fuel appears consumed, and the stars of our mortal and material matter begin to die out. When the times arrive that we self-destruct in the detonations of the brightest magnitude of our burnings, we should take pause. We must learn to leave some pieces or ashes of ourselves to others. To become the better angels or seeds of knowledge. The lights within another fuse or generation of precious life, inscribed into the core of their radiating warmth. And in this transfer of energy, I hope that those aging and distant lights above our fragile dominion look down upon us with a similar fire of redeeming hope.

 

In all the vast passageways of perpetual learning and in the unfolding telescopes of all discovery, I and a myriad of other stars have come to realize there is a divine trust that illuminates every home that flourishes in this more personal heaven. So, in my voyages of exploration—I will continue to relate to the stars and all the lights that dwell within my view. But now I have learned that, like the stars, I am also one of God's offspring. And this is how I know for sure—that we are related to everyone and everything, in the heavens, upon earth, and beneath the earth.

 

Now—let us track back and end where we began. First—sift through the earth and find your perfect and relatable grain of sand. Then, with the workshop of your mind—divide it into the ten thousand fragments representing its assemblage of stars per each unique grain. It is further estimated that there is at least one planet per star within the universe. So, with your blade of thought, divide that infinitesimal fragment again into two smaller, nearly invisible shards. If we estimate that one hundred billion people lived on this planet, everyone could each claim a subatomic particle of a plot upon the one remaining splinter. And in some stroke of incredible serendipity, we find ourselves occupying the whole of another "inner universe," filled with a diversity of things like quarks, muons, or neutrinos. A creation with distances, sizes, magnitudes, and properties measured in a quantum complex that seems as incomprehensible as our "outer universe." Our own intimate universe within a universe. And again, in the quietude of that subatomic domicile, we still need to find a greater dependence and a far more superior purpose.

 

Thinking about the inner kingdom of our hearts, embedded within the infinite cosmos of forever, helps us better comprehend one of the written divine mysteries known as "worlds without end." Together, we have discovered the point in space and time where all the lights of God and His children truly intersect in loving power and majesty. We have celebrated the Creator's story and purpose and have applied that principle to all our tender creations. And it is here, upon this gravitationally balanced Lagrange point, that we finally discover, even late in our life, that all the lights within us—are simply reflections of our Heavenly Parents and their heavenly love. Rays of eternal devotion and a Holy Spirit that will never perish and will never abandon us.