MORNING STAR REVISITED

Awestruck and bowled over by seeing my words posted last Sunday, I thought of words someone else had written on a similar subject—as my memory has it after many years. It seems there were some poor children living out in the farmlands of Chile who heard there was a special way to look at the morning star. The object was to “catch it”, so to speak, or at least its reflection, in the water; searching up in the sky had, as some of them knew, often only led to losing one’s balance in the dark.

The small band of children all arose in the early darkness and, shivering in the cold air, surrounded a muddy puddle left by the rain. And Lo! The bright morning star appeared in the water. The children were entranced and joining hands they danced and sang around its reflection. As they looked into the puddle they saw God looking back up at them and smiling.

I tend to believe the story, mostly because it was told, in the original Spanish, by the only women Poet Laureate in South America, Gabriela Mistral, who loved God and children, and loved the way the morning star shines in Southern skies.