Good Morning, Orion

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

--Lord Byron

One of my favorite signs of the coming of fall is the reappearance of Orion in the morning sky.

Orion is one of the most beloved and most recognizable constellations, and it’s easy to see why. He is made up of many bright stars, and it’s not too big a reach to picture him as a man, a hunter. 

Let’s face it. Some constellations look like this:

This is Epiphanachos, which represents a circus clown swallowing a barracuda while riding a unicycle and holding aloft a bathroom plunger. You see it, right?

Okay, so I made that up to show that many constellations don’t look much like anything at all. But practically everybody can spot Orion and the Big Dipper.

Orion's Belt

One of the trademarks of Orion, The Hunter, is a belt made of three bright stars. (I guess even constellations have to hold their pants up.)

As a child, I stared at those three stars from the window of my small bedroom. When an elderly friend died, I assigned her a star in Orion's Belt to help me remember her always. As time passed, I did the same for two more friends. That way I could look up and say, "There’s Mrs. Lunsford’s star. That one is for Miss Mary. And that one is for Miss Addie, the sweet lady who gave me the doll house."

I guess I was just carrying on an ancient tradition of commemorating people and stories with stars.

There are many (conflicting) versions of the myth of Orion, but it goes something like this. Orion was the son of Poseidon and the daughter of Minos, the King of Crete. Orion was a mighty hunter with many gifts. For example, he could walk on water because--after all--he was Poseidon's son. 

So he sauntered across the waves to the Island of Chios, where he got into a spot of trouble and was blinded by the ruler, Oenopion. Orion then stumbled his way to the far East, where the rising sun—Helios—healed him. 

Next Orion went on a hunt with the goddess Artemis. Something upset him, and he threatened to kill all the animals on the earth. Boys will be boys. But Mother Earth was not amused, and she sent a giant Scorpion who killed Orion. Zeus then placed Orion in the heavens as a constellation, along with his hunting dog, Sirius, and just to round out the story, the Scorpion.

The Hunter's legend probably won't be made into a Hallmark movie, but over time, Orion seems to have gone through a “sea-change”—or a sky change if you will. I think of him as a celestial friend, as a guardian of the earth--majestic, unshakable--keeping watch through the long winter months over the sons of men.

And I have a personal superstition that the first day in autumn that I see Orion will be a special day. In October of 1987, I first saw Orion through the nursery window, when I got up to check on my three sleeping sons. My belly was swollen with a fourth child, and I told myself that this would be the day I would give birth. By ten-thirty that night, I had a daughter.

This morning, September 5th, is my first Orion sighting for the year. The reason I'm up so early is that my daughter  texted me that she was on her way to the hospital to have her baby. My baby is having a baby--and I just can't seem to get back to sleep.

The Orion Nebula

I think it’s rather lovely that I saw Orion this morning, an echo of that sighting years ago when Mary Meghan was born. And yes, I do realize that a random group of stars can't really "watch over" me. But Orion reminds me that there is a Heavenly Guardian who never slumbers or sleeps, who always sees me, even when I can't see Him--a hunter who is ever searching for the hearts of men, to surprise them with unmerited favor and love.         


           The Lord made the stars,
               the Pleiades and Orion. 
           He turns darkness into daylight
              and day into night.
           He calls for the waters of the sea
              and pours them out on the earth.
           His name is the Lord.
                         --Amos 5:7-9, 
                           Good News Translation of the Bible


EPILOGUE: My granddaughter, Amanda Rose, was born later that day on September 5th. She is pictured here with her mom.

Mother, baby, and Grandma are all doing well! Is Amanda Rose another mythopath in the making? Let's just say that Grandma is going to do her part to introduce this child to the world's great stories.  :-)

The Seasons Tell a Story

According to Science, fall begins in the Northern Hemisphere on September 22, at 10:49 A.M. EDT. 

Seriously.  Not at 11:00 o'clock or even 10:50, but at 10:49 precisely.   

Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, of course—even Science. But I think that autumn is a state of mind. It begins when I get the urge to whip up a pot of chili. Or to sip a mug of apple cider. Or maybe it starts the first morning I see Orion, or when the first clump of yellow leaves appears on the old maple tree. 

Fall has a kind of wistfulness that suddenly overtakes me, and I feel like writing a poem or going for a drive with no destination in mind. The beginning of fall, for me, is impossible to predict. It just happens.

I have a friend who says that fall begins the first day you hear an airplane fly overhead and suddenly realize that the sound is no longer muffled by humidity in the air. I love that bit of folk weather-lore, although I’m pretty sure Science would tap its foot and scowl.

Science does that sometimes. For Science has its seasons, and the heart has its own.

The changing seasons are endlessly fascinating to me—partly because they tell a story. In fact, they tell the story at the heart of all myth, the story of the hero’s journey.

Every hero must set out on a journey (symbolically in spring) and face dangers/perils (summer). And finally he must confront the ultimate test. He must face death (winter). And in some sense, he must die, but then go through a resurrection into a new life.

Sometimes the hero faces his worst fear and, against all odds, emerges victorious. (Yay!) Sometimes he dies to his old self or mindset, but emerges with a changed heart. (Hmmmm.) Sometimes he actually dies (Boo!), but he lives on in his work/dream/beloved. (Ahhhhh.) But at its core, the mythic journey is about facing death.

In the seasons we have the seeming death of nature, as autumn leaves fall and many animals migrate or hibernate and the earth is buried beneath a silent shroud of snow. I can’t help but feel a sense of dread as winter approaches, even though I know the story well, and I know that spring will come again.

According to Science, the seasons are a random byproduct of the earth getting knocked a little crooked—so that the axis of rotation isn’t perpendicular to the plane of revolution around the sun. Yeah, whatever.

But I think the seasons are a message to the people of this planet. “Hang in there. No matter how dark or cold or gray your world may become, there will always be a spring. Never be afraid to hope. Never give up.”

We are the travelers on this journey, heroes in the making, facing our fears--not always by choice. And on this journey, we have only our friends, our faith, and messages of hope. Some of these messages were written on clay tablets by the ancients, some by a blogger in Indiana only yesterday. Some were written as fiction, some as poems. And some were written into the fabric of the universe.

I love Science. Our friendship goes back to my childhood. But sometimes Science and I just have to give each other some space. 

So Science can hang around the lab and wait for autumn, while I go on a hayride or start shopping for the perfect pumpkin. Because I know fall is already here.