Wed, Oct 3

Dear Elizabeth,

They’ve installed a star projection machine in my sensory study room. They’re not real stars of course, just lights, green lights, that swirl and shift and teach us to relax and slow down. It does work, kind of. One thing that fake stars can’t do, is teach us about the vastness of the universe, the vast unknowable.

One of my favourite poems goes like this:

 There will be an app 
 to make the ceiling of your bedroom 
 look like stars
 Because looking at real stars
 will make us feel
 small and alone
  
 “Do you think anyone is looking up
 at the same sky app as us?”
 “I don’t know dear, it’s not done loading.” 

There is a benefit, I think, to knowing that we are small, a truth we often hide from. Yet that’s not the whole truth. The Christian songwriter, Andrew Peterson, wrote a song called World Traveller, where he writes about his desire to travel the world – well worth a listen. In it he discovers that he doesn’t need to travel, because he finds that in getting to know his wife, he has discovered “mystic lands/ where galaxies swirl.” He finishes like this:

“Tonight I saw the children in their rooms
Little flowers all in bloom
Burning suns and silver moons
And somehow in those starry skies
The image of the Maker lies
Right here beneath my roof tonight”

I love the point that the song is making – that each human being contains galaxies, just as vast and unknowable as the stars, because we are created in the image of our Maker. We are so complex, that to get to know another human being is akin to travelling galaxies.

As such, you were always my favourite Star, vast and unknowable. There’s so much to you that I have yet to know. There’s so much that still surprises me. There’s so much that I reckon you are still discovering. I’m reminded of that great verse from Psalm 8:

“When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place
what is mankind that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?”

Psalm 8:3-4

I’m still amazed at that – that God has placed us as his images on this earth, that he cares for us, even though we are small in comparison to the vast heavens and moon and stars. I’m also reminded of the One who came down, “now crowned with honour and glory because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone” (Heb 2:9)

In his image,

Miriam

Tue, Oct 2

Dear Elizabeth,

It feels odd that others are doing your speaking for you. You were always so talkative. We hear many sides of the story, but the one we are most waiting to hear – your own – is not present. I’m reminded not to privilege some forms of communication over others. I’m a writer, I privilege words, that’s what I do. I’m reminded that a handshake is just as valuable an introduction as “Hello.” But words are all I possess at the moment, words are all I have to offer across the distance, thinking out loud, as the song goes. We can play do you remember with words. Do you remember the time when we were tasked with writing one song for history class, and you wrote three? We got Miss Brett to sing Grindel Bells to the tune of Jingle Bells, by process of coercion. You always had a way of making people laugh.

And now, I am told, you are giving us back communication – hand gestures, eye gestures. I’m reminded of two quote – one from Marion Coutts, on her husband’s lack of words “We will devise another language, and in it we will speak”, and one of my own, if I am allowed to quote myself, “When there are no more words to be had, we will eat silence.” I am afraid of silence, often, but many of my favourite moments have been silent. I once sat, silently, with a pile of sleeping kittens on my lap, during a thunderstorm, when the mother had left them in my care. I’ve sat silently, and made a new friend through tears, watching a slug silently cross the pavement. And there is something beautiful in sitting with God, in silence, not having to speak, because he knows your thoughts anyway.

I’ve done a lot of that this week – sometimes crying out in anguish, sometimes telling Him my sorrows, sometimes sitting in awe and wonder. Out of my back garden windows, I can see the trees, tall and blocking everything else out. Sometimes, like today, they are wild – the rattling of their branches sounds like rain. Other times, they are peaceful. When I get back on my bike, late at night, all I can see is their dark silhouettes, outlines against a full moon and glowing clouds.

I’d imagine that this is what these times have been like for you – sometimes wild storms, sometimes complete peace, sometimes peace in wild storms. I’m reminded of a quote from John Green, paraphrased, which I heard this morning – when we look up at the stars, we are not looking up at the universe; we are a part of the universe, looking up at itself.

What a privilege to know the God who made the universe! I’ll leave you with Psalm 23:

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff comfort me”

Stay comforted,

Miriam

(Note from 2019: Elizabeth now has her own blog, telling her own side of the story. You can find it here –
https://howtowalkbyelizabethstarr.blogspot.com/?m=1 )