THE SUN

Yawn. “Darned sun;” but, Oh well, nearly time to get up anyway, so I do. 

The Sun is a so-so star around which our planet swirls, one of trillions in space, and in astronomers’ terms, middle-aged at its five-plus billion years. If we take a close look, if we could travel at its speed of 220 km per second to get close, we would, along with the sun, be on a journey of orbiting of the center of our Milky Way galaxy—one orbit in 200 million or so years. But, once close enough (with our wings of wax melting) we see that the Sun itself is devoid of all color, save white; while holding the spectrum of all visible color. 

Speaking of color, one day, this middling-sized star large enough to hold a million or so earths, someday, this compared-to-us giant will burn down its hydrogen, convert to using its short source of helium, expand enough to consume Mercury, Venus, and Earth, then, having made a mess of life as we know it, Ka-boom! settle into new life as a red giant star, before it collapses to about the size of earth as a white dwarf.

Not today.

 Here’s what I love about the sun. Here I share a thought I first jotted in my journal in 1993. I leave it with you now, shortly after erasing the rant I just wrote about American character and, rather, leave it to you to apply the lesson I garnered about the sun when I read, “365 Starry Nights,” by Chet Reymo.

“Every second, the sun converts 657 million tons of hydrogen into 653 million tons of helium—nuclear fusion. The missing 4 tons of mass are converted into energy and hurled into space as heat and light. Earth intercepts only about one two-billionth of this energy, or about 4 pounds worth every second. Summer: a millionth of an ounce of the sun’s mass falls every second. Winter—less than half as much.”

Here’s my point. Heat and Light. A “millionth of an ounce.” We can’t live without it. So what, it’s cast-off stuff? We need it and the Sun freely gives it. Generously, indiscriminately, like the rain talked about in the Bible, falling on the just and the unjust. We all need it, we all get it. Who we are, doesn’t matter. Goodness is generously given. It’s just a thought. A good one for me, along the way to dying. 

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