Talking about Stars
Charles Frazier
Private Inman and his companion, an unnamed boy-soldier from Tennessee,
are sitting out the night
in a frozen Civil War battlefield ?littered with bodies, and churned up by
artillery.? It is long past midnight,
and the eeriness of the carnage is still keeping them from sleep. Suddenly
Inman spies Orion and,
finding comfort in its familiar shape, is able to relax. The constellation
stands there on the eastern horizon
?like a sign in the sky?sure of himself as a man can be.? Pointing it out,
Inman tells his comrade
that the name of Orion?s brightest star is Rigel:
The boy peered up and said, How do you know its name?
- I read it in a book, Inman said.
- Then that?s just a name we give it, the boy said. It ain?t God?s
name.
Inman had thought on the issue a minute and then said, How would you
ever come to know God?s name for that star?
- You wouldn?t, He holds it close, the boy said. It?s a thing you?ll
never know. It?s a lesson that sometimes we?re meant to
settle for ignorance. Right there?s what mostly comes of knowledge,
the boy said, tipping his chin out at the broken land?
At the time, Inman had thought the boy a fool and had remained
content to know our name for Orion?s principal star
and to let God keep His a dark secret. But he now wondered if the boy
might have had a point about knowledge, or at least
some varieties of it.
A conversation while star-gazing.
http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/Star-Gazing.htm
Source: Charles Frazier, "Cold Mountain"
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