Fan of gravity, don't kick the ceiling fan.

So I've really gotten into praising God for gravity. From outer space, what is up and down? If I'm standing upright, the Chinese are standing upside down... on an xyz graph, anyway! Which is how I tend to think, rather than spherically.

The gravity fan-craze started when I did something I've been needing to do this spring--walk out in a field at night and stargaze. It hasn't been enough to occasionally linger in my parked car when I get home; dirty windshield and town lights get in the way. A couple songs from Downhere's 1999 indie album encouraged me that it wasn't weird--in fact, perhaps deeply normal--to need to run out in a field and hug the earth and look at the sky and ponder the Creator's greatness. So, the first balmy night that made me aware of my aloneness, I walked into the middle of a soccer field behind my church that hadn't yet been mowed. I lay down on a tuffet of grass and stared at the sky. The breeze that danced around was both cool and warm.

As I stargazed, I played a mind game equivalent to the walking-on-the-ceiling game indoors. You know, as you lie on a bed you imagine that the ceiling is the floor; you imagine stepping over that doorway or climbing up the sloped floor/ceiling. Don't trip over the chandelier. etc. Only, in this version there's no ceiling. You've stepped through the trap door that is a skylight. Oh, that's scary.

The more I imagined I was "dangling" above outer space, the more firmly I felt the earth pressing into my shoulder blades. What I take for granted as the sensation of lying on my back felt more and more like an incredible magnet force keeping me from dropping into the sky.

P.S. I love the Orion constellation. He's a super-cool warrior dude. I don't think any of the other major constellations are people. Orion's Belt is the first collection of stars in the sky I ever learned to find and find again. Now I can see all of Orion, leaping across the night sky with his bow aimed for a long distance shot, his sword at his side. I've mentioned before how amazing it is to realize the stars I see, men of old saw too. Well, just now it occurs to me that (virtually) every soul that has ever walked this earth, has looked up at those same stars sometime. Wow. (Compassion for those who never get to see the sky)