Hazel and I sat in the backyard last night and looked at the sky. We watched Venus disappear into the horizon rather quickly after sunset.
Saturn is the latest planet to travel across the sky with the moon. They paired nicely as the moon enters the first quarter. Jupiter was just coming off of the eastern edge and rising over Lake Michigan as we sat outside on a mild evening.
“What do you know about infinity Dad?”
I told Hazel the moon is about 240,000 miles from our backyard. Venus is about 90 million miles from Riverside and Saturn is about 900 million miles away from Chicagoland.
Compared to infinity…
Going to the moon is like taking the CTA to Sox Park for a ballgame. Going to Venus would be comparable to taking the Illinois Central to New Orleans for a bowl of Gumbo and Saturn is like flying a DC-3 to Australia minus the big spiders and kangaroos.
I told Hazel that I’m not smart enough to think about infinity. I do have enough faith when it comes to the stars in the sky though.
Stars are peepholes from heaven. The people that we know in heaven get assigned a star when they die. Our job is to figure out which star is PopPop’s, Grampa Don’s, Gramma CiCi’s, Wags, OB’s and Debono’s.
Those are names that I mention often in the Parables according to Jumbo.
Hazel’s deceased grandparents, a kid that showed me that the Holy Spirit exists, a kid that had an airplane smash into his office window and the first kid to die from my high school class.
They all have bright stars that move across the sky every night.
“It’s getting cold Dad; can we go in?”
Today is going to be a gorgeous day as us Catlicks celebrate one of the Marian Dogmas.
Go out and walk that long shadow down a beautiful path. Do everything possible to smash Vitamin D on your face.
The weather I chalked down today comes few and far between during these next four months.
Go to bed tonight feeling rejuvenated and astonished….
….and Bear Down Chicago Bears.
