Pondering the stars with Snoopy

I saw a cartoon the other day. Charlie Brown and Snoopy were sitting with their backs to the viewer. They were looking up at a star filled night sky. Charlie Brown says, “What if they’re not stars? What if they’re holes poked into the top of a container so we can breathe?”

 At first my reaction was a silent chuckle. We are living in a container? That is contrary to everything I have ever read, experienced or known.

The more I thought about it the more intriguing I found the statement to be. Not stars? All the scientists, atheists, religious believers, and almost everybody I have ever met and not met believe that those dots of light in the night sky are stars.

 Merriam-Webster defines a star as  “a natural luminous body visible in the sky especially at night and a self-luminous gaseous spheroidal celestial body of great mass which produces energy by means of nuclear fusion reactions.” 

 In simpler terms a star is a round thing that emits light and heat. Stars may or may not have an assortment of planets around them. Those planets may or may not have conditions that support life as we know it.

 There is a stumbling block. Life on earth is remarkably diverse.

Creatures that live in the ocean require a different environment than people do. Birds fly, animals walk or run, plants tend to stay where they are but exhibit movement as they follow the sun. Microscopic creatures live their own lives, without worrying about us.

 All those different life forms vary wildly in appearance. They differ in their environmental needs. They differ in almost every aspect, yet we agree that they are indeed alive. 

 Then there is religion. Many if not most of us believe in something.

Most of our gods seem to live somewhere other than Earth. The good ones live somewhere above us and the bad ones live somewhere below us. 

 What if the god or gods we worship were far bigger than we could ever imagine? What if, in the grand scheme of things, we are merely pets inside a bottle and the stars are nothing more than holes punched so we can breathe? 

 I am not saying that we are tiny pets of something bigger. I’m merely asking you to think, to consider an alternate opinion. In this season of goodwill and endless shopping, what if we took a minute or so to ask if what we believe is truly real? Do we honestly believe that a tiny baby, born 2,000 or so years ago, changed the world as we knew it? We are so quick to denigrate other religions while so many have perverted our own religion and used it as an excuse to commit atrocities. 

 In the rush to buy, buy, buy, I would like for us to stop, look up at the night sky, and realize that members of other religions and other beliefs are also looking up at those same stars. They may not share our beliefs and that is OK. 

 Once we decide that Charlie Brown’s question is nonsense, we can get back to unearthing the nativity figurines, Christmas ornaments and other decorations that we set out every year. We decorate, shop, and cook. We do this to honor a baby born a very long time ago who grew up to tell us that God loves us and wants us to be nice to each other.