stars

I opened the Bible last night.
My eye fell on a verse from the book of judges.
"The stars in their ridings fell down to fight against Sisera."
This caused me to return to one of the odder speculations I've toyed with about our own lights.
When the lights appeared I couldn't see any stars in the sky.
What if the lights themselves were the stars...
What if they were the stars breaking all the physical laws we normally expect of the stars...
What if this was done to show us, all of us, that reality is other than we have ever imagined, that even the physical boundaries of the universe obey God...
Within the Catholic tradition, some of those who have claimed to see visions have described the sun dancing and the stars doing all sorts of things.
I see by the old writing on the wall that I'm going to have to contact my astro physicist friend Shane Dunlea to ask him if he can see star patterns in our UFO photographs.
But there's more.
I woke up this morning and reached sleepily for the Bible.
Opened it at random.
My eye fell on the same passage.
"The stars in their ridings fell down to fight against Sisera."
I haven't read this passage in years although I did write a poem based on it ages ago.
Now twice in twelve hours.
The passage describes a moment when the Israelites go to war with the Canaanites and hammer ten bells out of them.
It's not pretty.
Could our lights in the sky have been telling us of a war that is to come...
Ah folks, I'm starting to scare myself.
And the poem.
I know you want to hear about the poem. It was written when I was working in the Water Department of Kildare County Council. A hospital doctor called Hetteridge had rung up and asked me to guarantee a certain temperature and pressure in the water supply.
When I asked him why he wanted this guarantee, he told me: "I need the water to be in a constant condition to keep the embryos alive that we have here in suspension."
In the poem Hetteridge appears as Herterich, which was the name of a local butcher.
Here we go.

meditation on clane hospital
after reading the book of judges

doctor herterich sleeps
the babies in their test tubes are still
the flow of water from the mains keeps them alive
ready to serve the will
of him who became a god through the agency
of a modern university degree

the stars glister
it is written that once before
they fell from the sky
to wage war
against a nation
what has happened once can happen again

doctor herterich let your sleep be uneasy
not scholar nor doctor nor terrorist writes the law
and the stars in their ridings fell down to fight against sisera