Consider This: Starlight

Chair’s December Blog - Consider this: Starlight

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Starlight, star bright

Lead us on through the darkness

Starlight, we share you tonight

Bring us home in your light

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At St William of York Church, Forest Hill, these words are sung every year at the end of the carol service. They form the refrain of a Christmas Carol by Ron Ellis and are a firm favourite with the Parish Music Group, as the finale. The Church is decorated with stars and the parishioners join in with gusto. They know Christmas night is still a few days away but this is the night when the starlight begins to filter through the smoke trails from the fourth Advent candle. We have waited so long and we are almost there…

It is a gentle light, Starlight. It needs the darkness to make it visible and becomes invisible in the full light of day. It provides a symbol from the natural world to remind us to take time to look around and notice the small quiet things that make this time so wonder-full. 

In Landmarks Rob Macfarlane, the wordsmith, describes how:

“Emerson…sought to…restore the poetic origin of words, thereby revealing the originary role of nature in language. Considering the verb ‘to consider', he reminds us that it comes from the Latin ‘con-siderare', and thus carries a meaning of ‘to study or see with the stars’.”

To see in the Starlight requires consideration. It is not to be rushed. It is partial ‘sight’; not full knowledge, but a cautious step forward, aware of one's limitations, into greater understanding

John Shea recognises this quality in Starlight - Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long:

“If we light a Chanukah or Christmas candle we immediately notice one thing. The flame does not expunge the darkness. It burns in the darkness. The haloes of light carve out of blackness a cycle of brightness. Without the contrasting darkness we could not see. Night is an essential part of starlight. As such it symbolises that our seeing is also not seeing. Divine revelation includes divine concealment. Human perception includes human blindness. Light shining in the darkness is a realistic assessment of our earthbound capacities.

God may live in unapproachable light, but the incarnate son of God, the Word made Flesh, and his incarnate followers struggle in starlight, the mix of light and darkness.”

There is more than one way to search for the Christ-child this Christmas. The familiar stories tell us that the so-called simple shepherds went straight to the infant Jesus guided by a heavenly host as ‘glory shone around’, whereas the ‘wise’ men ‘struggled in Starlight’ including a fateful call at the wrong address before finally locating the King they had foreseen. Nevertheless, they all bowed and adored.

It is possible to find the divine hidden in the vulnerability of a baby; in the unexpected moments of illumination; in the smaller lights only visible when the main stage lights are extinguished. One young father, turning all the lights off at the end of a Christmas celebration, found his attention caught by two small lights still sparkling on the tree. They were the initials of his baby daughter twinkling in two tree ornaments. They were, he said, the star that led him to rest.

May your Christmas be filled with starlight and may the Christ-child ‘bring you home.’ The wait is over. Christmas is here. God is with us. Merry Christmas.

Anne Dixon

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

BC:AD, U.A. Fanthorpe