Once you've had your initial insights, go deeper.
Time Travel
In some ways this is a rather surrealistic image. It is an hour-long exposure of the stars rotating around the north star, photographed with Mount Shasta in the United States. Of course stars don't really rotate around Polaris but rather our planet Earth is spinning on its own axis; thus everything appears to rotate except for Polaris, which is positioned almost directly above our north pole.
For me this photograph helps to expand my mind. It reminds me that we are only a grain of sand in a sea called the Universe. Space and time are so enormous in relation to our mortal lives that it makes us laugh -- at the seriousness of our egos and at the insanity of our own aspirations and conquests. Some of the stars in this photograph are millions of light years away, yet the light from them is just arriving now. Consequently, this photograph is a window into the distant past, seeing stars that once existed and may since have burnt themselves out. The different colours attest to the amount of time it takes the light to reach us and thus is an indication of their distance.
So what cares or worries are you experiencing this week?
Does contemplating the size of the Universe help to put your life in perspective?
We cling to the edge of a grain of sand that hurtles through the abyss on spaceship Earth, emitting photons at the speed of light. Quite insane really! Perhaps this photograph can be an invitation to dwell on the night sky, to feel the awesome blackness of the universe, and to put our lives in perspective.
Perhaps this week is a good time to expand our time frame and tune into the eternal rhythms that encompass us. The weight of the world isn't really on our shoulders. Rather its spinning around the sun and we are just along for the ride. If a gigantic mountain can look that small in comparison, surely our earthly concerns are not always as big as we tend to believe.