"Gazing upward at night (with Chesterton)" - a poem

(photo: Wikipedia)

Today, May 29, is the birthday of writer G.K. Chesterton, who was born in 1874 and died in 1936. In one of my posts from a while back, I  quoted from a passage in his spiritual memoir Orthodoxy in which he tells of his conversion to Christianity. He describes the experience like cogs in a machine clicking into place: everything he'd been questioning and pondering suddenly made sense, and all his "blind fancies of boyhood ... became suddenly transparent and sane."

My favourite sentence in his conversion account is this one: "The fancy that the cosmos was not vast and void, but small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist; to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds." 

I love his description of the universe as "small and cosy," not cold and impersonal, and of God seeing the stars as "small and dear." In fact, I've looked at the night sky and, as I describe here, experienced that same sense of warmth and closeness.

Chesterton's words inspired me to write this poem. Today, being his birthday, seems the right time to share it.

Gazing upward at night (with Chesterton)

So I was thinking that if the stars

are (to You) small and dear, diamonds

skeined through the tissue of sky

by Your fond fingers,

and if, on any given night, You do not merely

stand back, admiring Your astral handiwork (finished

an infinite number of nights ago), but instead

begin afresh, newly sequinning the heavens –

naming, calling, loving each

and every star

for pure delight

alone –

well, then, I wondered

whether perhaps Your thoughts of me

are even more precious – that maybe

rather than surveying me from afar, You long to

catch my hand, swing me

into the celestial dance, laughter me

through the cosy vastness, while the stars

sing around us, joying in

Your delight in

(small, dear)

me.

 

 (photo: pixabay.com)