Imagine if the stars came out only once every thousand years, says Ralph Waldo Emerson. How people would gather to see them, and preserve the memory of them, passing down the story of the stars from generation to generation. (Imagine also there are no cameras to record their appearance…)

And yet in reality we are able to go out, or look outside, and see the stars every night. In the imagined case, we might call the stars’ appearance a “miracle.” Some might find the stories too fantastical to be believed at all. In reality we take the nightly miracle in our stride and some nights we forget to look up at all.

The stars “admonish” us, says Emerson. They are something to “revere” that is beyond ourselves. Such things can stir a soul to action.

I call myself “solitary” because I will spend a great deal of time alone, just reading and writing. But Emerson tells me I’m not really alone, because I have as company the words and thoughts of others.

“Nature” might be described as whatever is not us. For Emerson, there’s the world of “spirit,” which is the world of human souls, and there’s the world of nature, which is whatever is not human. And whatever is not human is divine.

When you’re truly alone you’re with nature, which is the same as saying “with God.”

There’s a lot of noise about whether there even is a God or gods when in fact the whole meaning of “God” can be discovered by just going outside and looking up at the stars.

In the light of day you might look back and say it’s just a metaphor; it’s all the same whether you do or not. And there’s plenty in nature to see in the daytime that might snap you back to a sense of the divine; a sense of what human beings have been seeking all through their lives for thousands of years; a sense of what I am when I am truly alone; a sense of my own self.

(I’ve been reading Emerson’s “Nature” in Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, published by Signet Classics in 2003.)