Shining so clearly ~ January 2, 1992

David Heiller

The stars stood sharply in the cold Christmas Eve sky as Noah (nine) and I headed to Faith Lutheran Church last Tuesday night. I pointed out Orion, who stood guard over our mailbox.

Orion usually guards the outhouse when I see him, but the season is moving, and Orion is moving with it. He’ll visit the outhouse in a few hours.

I pointed out the three stars of his belt, the stars that outlined his broad shoulders, his knees, his sword. Noah liked the sword part.

We headed up the road. Α moon just-past-full was rising on our right, like a squished orange. We watched it climb above the snow and brush. It would soon blot out the weaker stars of the sky, leaving only stalwarts like Orion and the Big Bear.

The Bear arched above Couillard’s house, but I couldn’t see a bear. I’ve never seen the Bear in Ursula Major, but it’s hard not to see its more common name and shape: the Big Dipper.

I pointed the dipper out to Noah, and he spotted it right away. I told him to follow the last two stars of the dipper out a bit, and he could find the North Star. “It stands all alone. It’s right above the road. That’s how I know this road runs due north and south,” I said.”

“I see it,” he answered with excitement.

“Stars were important a long time ago,” I told Noah in my official father voice that will soon bore him to tears. He’s not quite that old yet though, so he answered, “Why?”

“People can tell where they are by the stars. They use a sextant and it tells them right where they are on a map,” I said.

David and his kids circa 1992

“Like a compass,” he said.

“Yeah, kind of,” I answered, not being an expert with either instrument.

“Hey Dad, the moon is moving with us,” Noah said. It did look that way. It seemed to keep a few steps ahead on our right. Now it hung over the open field east of the church, away from the brush.

There was mystery in the night, with Orion and this moon and the North Star and all.

At church, we joined the rest of the family for the candlelight service. We listened as Pastor Sjoblom read passages from the Bible, passages without heavy lessons. Passages that told a simple story, which kept us listening and smiling even at this late hour.

We listened to the simple refrains from a clarinet played by Karla Kropp. No fancy organ to pound and pump us up, just single notes by a girl, strung together into sounds that fit the little church like a warm mitten.

We lit candles. The yellow light glowed off faces of friends and neighbors, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, and most important, of children.

Mollie stood proudly at my side, holding her candle up straight like the pastor had told us. Her eyes glistened with the light.

We sang Silent Night. I remembered how my Grandma Heiller would treat us with the German version, “Stine Nacht,” when we begged her enough, back when my Candlelight was young.

Then the wonders of candlelight at church on Christmas Eve returned from somewhere deep inside, deep in the past, and warmed me once again.

Afterward, Noah and I hit the road again, back the quarter mile to home. The words to an old Christmas time came to mind:

(Listen to the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpizGdABJkI)

‘Twas on a night like this, a little babe was born.
The shepherds gathered ‘round, to guard him till the dawn.   Above them shone a star, a star so wondrous light,
That never since in all those years have they seen one half so bright.
Shining so truly, shining so brightly,   guiding their footsteps from afar.   It led them through the night;   A path to love and brotherhood   by following its light.

We walked home quietly, followed by the moon, and the North Star, and the Big Bear, and Orion, and those other witnesses to the star that made this all possible.

Maybe it was on a night like this...