On summer nights in Colorado, I sat on a weathered wooden chair from Mexico that

adorned our front porch. Little girl against the dark and cold of night, I engaged with the

stars. Surrounded by a midnight blue velvet curtain loaded with millions of pin pricks

shining clear, bright light. I found Little Dipper first and then Big Dipper. At that time, I had

only heard of Orion and Pleiades and loved their names. I just knew they would be my

friends when we finally met. It was the 1960s and TIME magazine resurrected Nietzsche’s

declaration that God is dead and started a movement. I looked around at the postage

stamp view of that awesome display of night sky—something so beyond me that I trembled

to breathe. The little girl from Colorado lifted her arms in the air that night and decided not

to believe that lie. And I wouldn’t keep it a secret either.

And I felt another kind of darkness—blacker than this—one without stars at all.