Listening to “When You Wish Upon a Star” soothed me when I was a child, just as it did to Pinocchio when Jiminy Cricket sang it to him. If you’re like me, you can sing along, “When you wish upon a star/Makes no difference who you are/Anything your heart desires/Will come to you.”
Part of the reason it has stayed alive with me through the years is that I still hear at least a snippet of it with Disney movies since it is the theme song for the Walt Disney Company. Then, as a freshman in college, I grooved to Earth, Wind, and Fire’s update, “Shining Star,” but that version wasn’t the same.
Neither one of the songs was what lifted my heart that morning as I stepped outside in the pre-dawn darkness, burdened by things I should have left in the Lord’s hands. I had in fact released them into His care hours earlier before drifting off to sleep. Then, at 4 or 5 in the morning, I awoke with a troubled mind that was aiming to take it all back, determined to wrestle with it myself. And so I fidgeted my way out the back door.
While I was gazing upward into the universe, I whispered Psalm 19: “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the Earth, and their words to the world.”
At that moment, with those words on my lips, a falling star shot across the sky.
Okay, it wasn’t actually a shooting star, for (scientifically speaking) it was only the glowing trail of a meteor (more specifically a meteoroid, the debris of the meteor) as it was entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Still, the timing of it was enough to recharge my doubting, doleful soul at 4ish a.m.
Now, in case you’re thinking, “Did he wish upon that star?” I’ll tell you.
Yes, but probably not in the way you’re thinking. The Greek astronomer Ptolemy (second century CE) wrote that the gods cause shooting stars. According to him, the gods get bored and so, desiring some entertainment, are curious enough to take a peek at the mess the mass of humanity might have created. As the gods peer down upon Earth, stars sometimes shoot through the portals through which the gods look down, and so the stars become visible to us as shooting or falling stars. Since the gods are already looking in Earth’s direction, they tend to be more receptive to any wishes we humans might make.
But I didn’t wish for something called fate to be on my side or for the gods to look favorably on me as I stood there in the morning darkness. My words were more than a mere wish since I prayed them to the Lord, my God. God was speaking without a sound, through that falling star, part of His creation. I picked a sentence from one of St. Francis’s prayers and made his words my own, “Where there is doubt, let me bring faith, (first to myself); where there is despair, hope.” Most of all, I prayed to finish well, that when my time comes to step from this speck of dust called Earth into the vastness upon which I peered, I will have finished the race God intended for me to run.
The truth of ol’ Jiminy Cricket echoed from my childhood: “Makes no difference who you are,” and coupled with the words of the Eternal, “I have called you by name; you are mine,” they buoyed my wearied soul.
The star, or meteoroid, was long gone, having had its one second on the night sky’s stage. But its trail of stardust had sprinkled my heart and was still shining when the sun broke on the eastern horizon.