Once upon a time, a long time ago,
a woman in her middle years and therefore
in one of the most exciting times of her life,
fell in love with a star.
It was a truly beautiful sight as it shone in the night sky.
It would guide her on her journey home at the close of each day.
She began to feel that if only she could grasp this star,
which beckoned her from so far away,
it would be the answer to all her problems,
would guide her safely on her way both day and night.
But she knew only too well that she could not bring it to earth.
Saddened, she sat down by the roadside,
lulled by the sighing of the wind in the trees.
Suddenly, she heard its voice change:
it was singing in the trees,
and this is the song it sang and the story it told.
Many, many years ago, all of our forebears. .
dwelt deep in the heart of a star,
carrying within them the glow of the first great flash of life
as the universe flared into being.
As they drew closer and closer together, bonded by the energy of love,
they burnt brighter and brighter.
Through the very closeness of their bonding they came to agree
that what all wanted most was to expand
and give rise to a new way of life.
Then one day a great event happened.
With a mighty explosion, the star gave up its own life
to become life for myriads of others.
But its life continued to burn, sometimes darkly,
but always there at the heart of all the new stars
and all of the planets that were cast into space.
One of these, Planet Earth, fell in a wonderful spot,
and it discovered that very soon, in planet time,
though after billions of years in human time,
it was becoming covered with green
and bursting with all kinds of life,
with fish life, with flower and tree life,
with bird and animal life.
Until one day it awoke in a special way,
and woman and man life emerged on its surface.
As Earth paused now to reflect on who she was,
she became very aware of the star-dust
deep in every part of her being;;
starstuff that still glowed with the fITe and the light
of the supernova from which she was born
and which still carried within it the wonderful radiance
of God's loving act of creation.
Wind sighed and fell silent,
But the woman, in this exciting time of her life,
burst into song, for she knew now without doubt,
that her star was not unobtainable, up in the heavens,
but was alive and glowing deep in her own heart,
that she carried within her something of this radiance from God
which would guide her safely through the journey of life.
We are all women of the stars and this story is all about us:
about the need to become aware of our own precious star.
to learn to follow its light,
to heed the messages it gives.
What is this star which is hidden deep within each of us,
which leads us unfailingly through the end years of our lives?
It is the God-given gift of Wisdom,
the reflection of eternal light (Wis 7:26) which Proverbs tells us:
"Yahweh created when his purpose first unfolded,
created as the first fruits of his fashioning. "(8)
A Wisdom that sings:
"From everlasting I was by God's side, delighting him day after day,
ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere on his earth,
delighting to be with the children of men. "
I like to think of these later years as a journey in pursuit of wisdom and one guided by wisdom. A wisdom which reveals itself more and more as we travel, becoming not only our goal but also our guide.
