good morning Hank it's Tuesday greetings
from the shores of Lake Michigan one of
the five Great Lakes of North America
which together are larger than Great
Britain and contain around 20% of the
world's freshwater people in the Midwest
sometimes refer to the Great Lakes as
America's Third Coast and it does feel
that way to look out at the horizon on a
clear day I can just make out the
skyline of Chicago some 60 miles
southwest of here but look Northwest and
there is nothing but water to the
horizon line and far far beyond it's
reported that in 1634 when Jean Nicolet
became the first European to venture
across Lake Michigan he thought he'd
made it to China whenever I look at a
vast body of water stretching all the
way to the horizon I've become suddenly
and newly aware that I am on a planet
like I'm on a ball heated by a distant
light in a way that allows for this
water to be all in all quite temperate
and life is not just contingent upon
that distant light but in many ways a
direct product of the light we are
powered by sunlight sunlight stored in
the fossil fuels we burn and in the
plants we eat every tree and drop of
liquid water the teeming life of the
micro cosmos every blade of grass and
the song of every Mockingbird all of it
runs one way or another on solar power
we don't just need the Sun we are sort
of comprised of its energy no wonder
then that Wikipedia's list of solar
deities is so long from the Egyptian raw
to the greek helios to the aztec nanika
watson who sacrificed himself by leaping
into a vast bonfire so that he could
become the shining sun this makes sense
because the Sun is like a god in its
fearsome and wondrous power also like a
God the Sun is difficult or even
dangerous to look at directly in the
book of Exodus God says you cannot see
my face for man shall not see me and
live and so it is with the blinding Sun
in pilgrim at tinker Creek any Dillard
rights we have really only that one
light one source for all power and yet
we must turn away from it by universal
decree
nobody here on the planet seems aware of
this strange powerful taboo that we all
walk about carefully averting our faces
this way and that lest our eyes be
blasted forever
days here on the Third Coast tend to
close with godly beautiful sunsets the
kind that remind you of the TS Eliot
line about how light is the visible
reminder of the invisible light it's
easy to forget how breathtakingly
beautiful the planet is not
breathtakingly beautiful actually
but breath giving ly beautiful look at
what the Sun has made of its energy
trees and the wind that blows in them
warm water and the creatures that drink
it beauty and those who marvel at it but
to me the weirdest thing the Sun has
made from its energy is consciousness in
us the light has made a way of
understanding itself for me a Third
Coast sunset shows me how small I am on
the banks of this vast lake which is
itself small compared to the planet
which is small compared to the Sun which
is just one star among the countless as
I walked along the sandy beach after
nightfall I thought of the mind-blowing
fact that there are more stars in the
universe than grains of sand on earth I
am so inconsequential a footnote to a
footnote to a footnote but how wondrous
to be here in the first place to bear
witness to the Setting Sun to know that
you are not just in the universe but
also of it Hank I'll see you on Friday