Dear God,
In Isaiah 60:1-3, it is written:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.

This passage in Isaiah and others like it promising light to the ones who walk in darkness, have always given me great consolation, as they remind me of Meister Eckhart’s wisdom: “It is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”

I underestimated the role of stars, lights in the sky, in the story of Jesus’ birth until last year’s Christmas pageant, when Katherine was demoted from an angel to a star. It called to mind the pangs of devastation I felt in the fifth grade when I lost out to Marci Simons for the part of Mary. Maybe I needed some re-wiring in my brain back then, or maybe I was psychic, because Marci went on to steal my boyfriend five years later.
“A star is better than a walnut,” said the barista at my favorite coffee joint. She was also demoted from an angel (to a walnut because her third-grade teacher decided the class was going to represent a cornucopia instead of the nativity scene–Mary and Joseph were so “last year.”)
It was my college roommate, and Katherine’s godmother who made me appreciate the stars’ importance to the nativity, and to our everyday lives.
“Please tell my goddaughter that a star is so important,” she wrote to me last year when I informed her of the crisis. “I’m proud that she got that role (no demotion in my eyes). A shinning star led the wise men to baby Jesus. Stars are the light that help us through the darkness. In these dark winter days, light is what gives us hope.”

My friend Sandy added this, which I think is very poignant and true:

Living in a concrete jungle like Chicago and NYC, I never get a chance to see the stars. When I go back to Michigan to my small town roots, I always look at the sky to get a glimpse of what I am missing every night in my fast-paced city life. Stars always bring me back to the beginning.

Stars do bring us back to the beginning, to the mystery of creation, to the big questions. I find it fascinating and symbolic that a person needs to go to places of darkness in order to best see the constellations in the sky. Like Meister Eckhart articulated, the irony of light is that it depends on darkness to be shown. In other words, light is invisible in light. So, in our deepest depression, we are, in fact, closest to hope.
Spanish Carmelite mystic John of the Cross writes about this in his poem, “The Dark Night,” which I chose as the topic of my senior thesis back when I was a religious studies major at Saint Mary’s College. Having traveled through a very dark night in my freshman and sophomore years, I was intrigued and comforted by the first five stanzas of his poem, which my thesis director made me memorize:

One dark night, fired with love’s urgent longings – ah, the sheer grace! – I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
In darkness, and secure, by the secret ladder, disguised,- ah, the sheer grace! – in darkness and concealment, my house being now all stilled.
On that glad night, in secret, for no one saw me, nor did I look at anything, with no other light or guide than the one that burned in my heart.
This guided me more surely than the light of noon to where he was awaiting me- him I knew so well – there in a place where no one appeared.
O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover.

The poem is about a soul’s movement into contemplation and perfect union with God via spiritual purification. But it can also be interpreted to express the voyage from darkness to light made by those suffering from depression.
During my suicidal 18 months, my friend Sandy (Katherine’s godmother) reminded me to look for the light. “No matter how black your darkness is, there is always a speck of light,” she said. “Keep your eyes on that light.”
At first all I could see was the tiniest blip of brightness, like a speck on a photograph that isn’t supposed to be there. With more time and prayer and drugs and therapy, light began to trickle in, filling the shadows here and there. And then, ever so gradually, my vision was truly illuminated, so that I not only wanted to be alive, but I could perceive goodness and beauty and love in the people and things around me.
Sandy is right. Katherine hadn’t been demoted at all. Stars not only guided the wise men to the Christ Child, but every day we look up, they take us back to the beginning: to a world that began as one big gas explosion (divided into seven neat days, of course). They remind us of the first dawn, and of the eternal dawn, where, as John of the Cross says, “the mind, in sweet tranquility, is elevated above its comprehension to a divine light.”
God, please keep me in the light. Please show me the light. Please be my light. Now, on this Feast of the Epiphany when we celebrate the stars, and forever. Amen.