Youngblood : Still counting stars
Hannah Faye M. Muralla
Inquirer News Service
WHEN I was younger, I would climb to the roof of our house whenever there was a power interruption in our neighborhood, which was often. As I climbed up the ladder, I would mumble words of disgust with the electric cooperative for being so inefficient. I'd continue to complain as I lay on my back, but once I turned my gaze to the heavens, my mood would change. Evenings without electricity were always the best times to go stargazing. The darkness and silence that draped the night made the stars twinkle even brighter.
The heavens have always fascinated me. I would spend a lot of time reading books about the constellations during the day and when night came, I would try to locate them in the evening sky: Cassiopeia, Andromeda, the Big Dipper, etc. Sometimes, I would just count every star that was visible to my eyes.
My love for stargazing began when my father called my sisters and me "Tres Marias" [Three Marys] He pointed to a row of three bright stars in the sky and told me they were sometimes called the Tres Marias, too. The three stars, I found out later, composed Orion's Belt in the constellation Orion.
And so began a hobby that I'd do to relieve stress or when I was just plain mad that there was no electricity at a time when I most needed it. On the first year I spent looking up to the heavens, questions began to pop in my head: Were aliens real? What made falling stars fall? Why did they twinkle? What was beyond the dark space? Most importantly, I asked: Who made all these heavenly bodies?
I asked my father, hoping to get clear-cut answers. He told me God made them all.
I pursued the question: Who made God? "No one," he said. "He's God, you know. No one ought to question his authority and power."
"But God doesn't hate you for asking such questions," he hastened to assure me. "Young kids like you tend to ask questions a lot."
I persisted: "How can it be that the universe just came to be? Did God just appear, too?"
"In time, you'll understand. You just have to have faith," my father replied, smiling.
Faith is such a vague word. We say to see is to believe, but faith requires you to believe even without seeing. And for a young child like me then, faith was hard to understand.
But I didn't have to wait too long. As soon as I entered school, science began to teach me a lot of things about the world I didn't fully understand and the faith I was trying to fathom. Pre-school saw me grow my first plant and identify its parts. Elementary school taught me all about the human body and the flora and fauna of the earth. High school made a little clearer to me the world I lived, with my Physics, Chemistry and Science Research subjects. I was introduced to the universe further, learning the physical laws that governed it. Thirteen years of school prior to college required me to learn and understand the concepts and processes involved in sustaining life. I had to learn more than stoichiometry and thermodynamics in an attempt to understand life and the laws of the universe. And whenever I learned something new and fascinating, I was awed and then I would say to myself, "So that's how God does it! Wow."
It's most amazing that the world and the universe operate by a certain logic that is unmistakably similar and consistent. The more we learn of something, the more we appreciate the powerful intelligence behind the many wonderful designs and functions that benefit humanity and the rest of creation. Faith comes at a much later time, when we've been enlightened and we acknowledge what we still don't know and cannot do as mere humans.
In college, we are taught things at a higher level and encouraged to gain a more profound understanding of our existence. I have realized that faith doesn't need to be blind. Faith doesn't even require us to believe without seeing with our eyes at all. God reveals Himself in all creation -- on land, on sea, and in the heavens and beyond. God reveals Himself both in the simplest and most complex of creations.
Questions I previously asked, like why a falling star falls or why stars twinkle, have been answered. As to the existence of aliens, I'm still not sure and all the more is my uncertainty as to what goes beyond the outer space. But ask me any time who made the universe and I can answer you with conviction. Science may have not opened the last window of creation yet (as depicted in the film "The Creation of the Universe"), but I believe that the billions of years' worth of evidence (and the future discoveries to come) all point to an intelligence beyond human comprehension.
At times, I also ask why humans feel the want and the need to know things. It may be that we were hard-wired to be curious beings that are also intelligent enough to find answers to our own questions, though not all the time. After all, we were made in the image of the Creator who's behind all these wonder. But since we are mere mortals, we could never be all-knowing like Him. Gaining the profoundest knowledge of everything would be quite impossible. My father was right: we were not meant to understand all things. Sometimes, you just have to have faith.
Last summer, free from the pressures of school, I once again looked up to the heavens at night and I wished upon a falling star that I may never be deprived of star-gazing and that I would continue to appreciate every spectacle I see and deepen my faith further in the One who made them all possible.
And just like what I did in my younger and more carefree days, I looked up to the heavens and attempted to count the stars that twinkled brightly. I kept counting even though I knew that I could never count them all in one sitting, just like the questions that I kept asking them although I knew that most of them would never be answered in a lifetime.
I will continue to counting stars at night -- for the fun and beauty of it, and because it enriches my faith.
Hannah Faye M. Muralla, 18, is a third year Bachelor of Arts in Communication student at Ateneo de Manila University.