Dark Sky Holiness

Many cities are adopting regulations about light pollution. When cities go dark, the night sky lights up!

If you've ever spent a night out in the desert or some other remote area far from human habitation, one of the things that immediately caught your attention was the brilliant array of stars in the night sky. Out there, the Milky Way is not a candy bar, but a visible and seemingly infinite band of stars and planets that causes many observers to contemplate their finitude. One can feel quite small standing in the vast and expanding universe of God's creation.

Contrast that experience to, say, glancing up at the night sky as you exit your local shopping plaza while munching on a Milky Way. You might see the moon and maybe a few of the brighter constellations, but the dearth of visible stars means you're probably contemplating the route home or the calories in your Milky Way rather than the stars in the Milky Way. You're not likely to be reflecting upon your finite and humble place in the cosmos.

Artificial light has become such a ubiquitous part of modern life that two-thirds of the...