another aurora borealis fan

a writing prompt + May Writing Hour

Welcome to Writing in Company. Each week I share some words and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points for you to write about what matters. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft thoughts for your own writing project, as meditation or prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. You can always look back through the archive for more ideas. Grab your pen and paper, and let your words loose on the page.

I was already in bed last Friday, tired from a long week of teaching, late night fun, and introverted extroverting. I took a last glance at my phone, and saw that the weatherman-I-always-believe¹ had just posted “Please get outside now and look at the northern lights in the Carolinas!!!!” Without hesitation, I put on my shoes, stopped to grab some friends, and we hightailed it down the stairs and out onto the bridge over the dam at Montreat, North Carolina.

My vision isn’t great, and my phone is too old to do whatever other people’s phones were doing, but standing under that dark sky, with those flickers and colors and other fortunate people felt….holy. We’d just spent a week creating, playing, and praying together, talking about the Rhythms of Wonder—a theme that had been chosen for our conference² almost two years earlier—with this as the logo:

Seriously….who could have known?

On our last night, we gathered under a sky full of wonder and rhythm, witnessing the aurora borealis. It was christened so in 1621 by a young Frenchman, Pierre Gassendi, combining the names for the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek north wind Boreas.

Someone on the bridge that night tried to explain to me what was happening—something about solar flares and electrons and different elements absorbing light from different parts of the color spectrum— and I nodded along. The science interests me, but I usually don’t remember it. What I will remember is more of what Maria Popova describes in her essay The Poetic Science of the Aurora Borealis:

…I feel that the science of it — this work of immense forces across immense distances, this work of the human imagination across a lineage of minds thirsting for truth — only magnifies the magic of the celestial spectacle. Suddenly, we are plunged into a dazzling awareness of our cosmic origins and our connection to one another, each of us a link in the unbroken chain of time going back to Gassendi, back to the first human animal who looked up at the storm of color and was stilled with awe, back to the Big Bang that produced the particles roiling in the night sky. Whenever we gasp at an aurora, our lungs inhale molecules of air made of atoms forged in the first stars, and we are left wonder-smitten by reality — the only way worth living.

Rhythms of wonder, indeed.

If you missed it because it was cloudy, or not near you, or you just plain didn’t know—I’m sorry to share another Northern Lights fan photo. But here is what a friend standing beside me captured on a magical holy night.

Thanks Lauren!

a writing prompt

Write about the Northern Lights, or about something in the sky that captivates you with wonder, or use this poem by J. Weaver, Jr. as a starting place.

Find it at The Poetry Foundation

Take whatever time you have, and put some words on paper. Wonder can find rhythm on the page, too!

May Writing Hour - Saturday, May 25 | 4-5 pm Eastern

My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is coming up. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join in. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s write together.

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Another one from my friend

1. Brad Panovich, chief meteorologist at the NBC station in Charlotte

2. https://www.re-create.cc/arw2024.html