"Lost in 'The City Dark'"

A few days ago, NPR featured an interview with Ian Chaney, whose documentary, "The City Dark" is to be shown on PBS this week. Chaney explores the ways that increasing light from human activities  is changing us, not just environmentally but also in how we view all of life.

NPR's David Greene and Chaney strolled through downtown Washington DC one recent night ("not the safest place to do this" Greene quipped), and it quickly became clear how little they could see in the sky.

CHENEY: We can probably see Saturn, which is pretty bright tonight. We can certainly see the moon.
GREENE: Right there. That is there.
CHENEY: We can probably see Arcturus and maybe a handful of others. Other than that, it's pretty much a purple wash.
GREENE: That's the light pollution. And Cheney believes it's changing how humans behave.
CHENEY: I feel that I'm looking down more. And some of that is just dodging cars and traffic and people on the city streets. But it's also, I think, fairly metaphorical for becoming a little bit more self-obsessed. So, it really resonated with me when I spoke to astronomers and other thinkers who were suggesting that in losing the night sky, we're not only losing something beautiful, we're losing this reference point, a sense of perspective. And to think that most kids now will grow up without that perspective, without a sense of our place in space.

More self-obsessed. Losing a reference point, a sense of perspective. One person in the film notes that "Most human routines make no reference to the cosmos at all."

Sounds a lot like the world we all live in, doesn't it? And in the busy to and fro of our lives, it does sometimes seem like we are "looking down more," dodging life's problems like the cars on a busy street. Have we, Christians along with all the rest of humanity, become so lost in our day to day living that we fail to look up, to remember the real source of our glory, knowledge, language, awe?

Tonight, many of us will find some spot in a park, on a hill, on a grassy lawn, and spend more time than on any other night looking up at fireworks displays in all their glory. And when the last spectacular booms have faded to silence, when the last sparkly points have turned to dark ash floating slowly to earth, will we just fold up our chairs and blankets and go home, thinking the show is over?

Instead, let's remember with the psalmist, where the real glory, the real "reference point" comes from, Who it is that can give us the only true sense of perspective.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat. - Psalm 19:1-6