We were under a dark blanket of sky, sparkling objects over our heads, the earth supporting us from beneath, constellations changing as the night moved along, watching cosmic debris hitting the earth’s atmosphere and disintegrating, leaving burning trails of magic. Sure, it can be overwhelming to look at the night sky and get a glimpse of the vastness. People want simplicity, not to think too hard, not to feel too deeply. But what if the greatest invitation from the universe itself was to liberate your complexity?

I decided to take the kids to the desert to watch the meteor shower. And even though Andrew was drowning in work, at the very last minute he decided to join us. Just one night. No tent. Pack light. Grab an extra pair of underwear and let’s just go! Life flashes by, and it’s hard to make time to go on a date with the Summer Triangle, and there are all the obligations. We can spend ages ignoring our North Star. It’s not that when you follow it life gets easier or prosperous, or happier. It’s not that you can constantly follow it either, let’s face it. It’s that as you rotate around it, and it reveals more nuance and texture, you make the project of your life more meaningful. 

When we let the immensity of the universe speak to us, we might not find answers. Instead of clarity we get dark matter. Instead of fixed definitions and distinctions we might find constructs decaying in a cosmic compost pile. And that can be frustrating, challenging, confusing, and less, well, simple, than what we’d like things to be. But it’s those moments when you hear something wild calling you away from the everyday, yet fully into your life, when you answer and let yourself move out of your comfort zone, when you give yourself permission to receive how layered life is – it’s those moments that free your mind to expand, and open your heart to deeper understanding. 

The night sky reminds me of how not simple and beautifully interwoven reality is. Binary thinking blows up. Paradigms of black or white dissolve. When you look at space and realize that what you’re seeing is time. The light that you see in the darkness is something that has already happened. Your head bends sideways. Exhale. Laughter. Taking the kids to the desert to watch a meteor shower, can be a reminder not to flatten the world, not to give in to the shallow messages of the media, and social media, and society’s obsession with certainty, clarity, and simplicity. 

We think we are upright. It’s obvious to us that there’s up and down. Pull away from the earth just a tiny bit and you realize that the expanse of space doesn’t have an up and a down. I look up at the night sky and keep thinking; it’s not just above me, it surrounds me, the largeness of it is all encompassing, it’s underneath me too. I’m just a tiny speck. We think that we are right and it is obvious to us that there’s a right and wrong. What would happen if we pulled away just a tiny bit? What would we discover if we broaden our perspectives just a little?

And I’m not saying there isn’t a right and wrong. That would be oversimplifying too. Because we are not just cosmic debris, and we’re more than our instincts (we’ve gotten ourselves a bit too removed from our instincts actually), and our thinking mind, our human perceptions, our cultural identities and how they all mix together, our cognitive capacities – all of it must be included in the conversation! And in that inclusion there are boundaries of wrong and right. 

Simplifying things is often a good idea. Knowing what the next step is on a big journey, breaking things down into smaller pieces so that we can digest them, organizing things so that we are less overwhelmed – all important. But our culture is so obsessed with clarity, with direction, with answers, with stability, that we lose the wide range of color and texture that make up reality, and forget (or resist) that this reality is ever changing. Change pushes into the walls of certainty, it adds variables, it shakes things up, and it defies simplicity. 

I was woken up by our little dog, Gracie, attempting to leap and chase something, her leash on my upper arm pulled hard. I pulled her back and held her close. The silhouette of a coyote by a cactus on the hill looked like an art piece. My heart pounding, I snuggled with Gracie under a canopy of infinity, and watched the darkness of the sky continue to light up with meteors. 

We are held, supported by this giant rock and its molten core, rooted in its transformative essence, made and nourished by the liquidity it generates, breathed by conditions it created through intricate and delicate processes and connections. And we are completely unsupported at the same time. Suspended in space. On our own in this world, but never not part of a greater whole. We are meant to be living our own lives. Kids need to individuate. And our own lives are never not tangled with other lives. 

Gracie left my embrace, her leash still high up on my upper arm, and nestled between the kids, her little body settling in with both their sleeping bags under her. She seemed restful, but her ears were perked. 

Lying there under the vastness of the universe, watching the rise of a huge, bright presence, not knowing what time it was, curious to know who that bright object was – is it Jupiter? Is it Sirius? No, Sirius rises closer to sunrise this time of year. Wait! Is the night over? It seems too dark to be that close to sunrise. What time is it? Who cares! Should I sit up and reach for my phone to open the app and check if that’s a planet? It’s so big – it’s gotta be Jupiter! 

Knowing felt important and insignificant at the same time.

More blazing trails crossed the sky. Jupiter was rising higher and a little friend was coming up with it, close by, they seemed deep in conversation. (I later learned that it was Mars – there’s a Jupiter/Mars conjunction this week). 

At some point I woke up again to hear Gracie growling. She was sitting, still between the kids, ears perked, looking toward the hill. Protecting. I couldn’t see a coyote, but her body language spoke loudly. She was protecting the kids. She was the camp guard. She took her job seriously. If anything came near, she was ready to take care of it. Little did she know that in someone else’s eyes, she was a midnight snack. 

She saw herself in one way. The coyote saw something completely different. And I saw something else.

We create little boxes for each other to fit into, and find our way into boxes put together by others. We define ourselves in certain ways, and create patterns to keep those definitions alive. We have ideas about who people are, and give them chances to show us that our ideas of them are correct. We are labeled by people and we find that we take the shape of the molds they make for us. And yet we are each so much more than what someone thinks of us. We are each so much more than the ideas that we confine ourselves to. 

She growled for a while. I laid on my side to watch the scene. More meteors. The Summer Triangle moved west and shifted its position in relationship to the North Star. The sky still dark, the milky way spilling, spreading. I felt so grateful to be awake in the middle of the night and watch light years tell stories that I can’t quite understand, yet feel so deeply in my bones. 

At some point I brought Gracie closer and snuggled with her, feeling her whole system calm down and become a little baby dog. We both fell asleep. But I kept waking up, smiling at every “shooting star” my eyes could catch, feeling so blessed. The human world might be messed up. And humans are definitely messing things up for other humans and for other species. And I am privileged that I get to even have space in my mind for thoughts about the universe. But when we catch a glimpse of its vastness, and with it get hit by how miraculous life is, you gotta let that in. 

I could tell that the sky was getting brighter. And it saddened me. Gracie was asleep under my arm. The kids were sleeping. Andrew was sleeping. Meteors kept meeting the protective layer of our planet, and falling apart in this magnificent way. I felt a little sad. I didn’t want the night to end. I couldn’t see the Summer triangle anymore. I don’t want the Summer to end. I don’t want to go back to the schedule and the routines. There’s still a couple of weeks before the kids go back to school. But I’m already grieving. Grief is a groove I flow through often. 

The sun didn’t rise above the giant rock formation yet, but the sky was no longer speckled in stars when I woke up from Gracie pulling, trying to launch herself at something. I turned my head in the direction she was trying to go, and saw a bunny, grazing by the bushes nearby. 

The kids woke up too. When I told them about the night, the coyote, and Gracie, Kesem, who will be 12 in November, snuggled Gracie and chanted; “Predator, prey, predator, prey, predator, prey…” We laughed, reminding each other how we are all more than one thing. 

We are liminal. Transitional space. Interstitial fluid. Somewhere and nowhere at the same time. In between. 

There are no simple solutions to our problems. There is no one thing that you can do that can heal you. No state is meant to be sustained. No identity needs to be held too tightly. And being too loose about who we are isn’t the point either. We must cycle through the wide array of our many constellations. No one collection or formation is meant to hold its place in relationship to others. And yet there is recursion. We revisit places, but we are never the same. We are who we are and we are always changing. We are more than one thing. Predator. Prey. Portals. Protectors. In need of care and safety and support. And a little bit of danger too. Players in a cosmic light show. A quick flash. So let’s burn bright. 

I’ll leave you with the words of Audre Lorde; “I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”

Sending you love,

Hagar