W
ith no cabin of my own to call home for the night, I climbed the steps from the hull to the open deck of the ferry and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the velvety black night. I could barely see where to step.
The bench was hard and cold in the offshore summer air. I breathed in and out, inhaling the distinctive rank of briny seawater and exhaling a certain tiredness that comes from living out of a backpack. As I listened to the water splash rhythmically against the side of the boat, tranquility Psalm 19:1 of the little washed over me.
Freshly graduated from undergrad, I had been on the “As it said in road for two months, staying pink pocket Bible I carried on my in crowded, fluorescent-lit The vast hostels across Europe so that journey, ‘The heavens declare the expanse of sky I could witness the hands glory of God; the skies proclaim stretched over ticking off the passage of time the shoreless the work of His hands.’” at London’s famed Big Ben, sea. My eyes stare into the stony eyes of took in the the gargoyles perched atop Paris’s Notre Dame, nebulous night, and stars began to pierce the and meander through Gaudi’s fanciful Barcelona darkness. At first, I could only see the brightest playground Parc Güell. I had marveled at the celestial bodies, but in time I began to connect handiwork of man as I traveled from there onto more neon cities across the continent—until they the dots, and the familiar constellations became visible. As my pupils dilated further, I saw more began to blur together like a hazy dream. and more stars splash across the night sky. What had at first appeared blindingly dark now Now, I found myself floating in the middle of revealed itself to be dazzling with light. As it said nowhere. Or rather, floating somewhere in the in Psalm 19:1 of the little pink pocket Bible I middle of the Ionian Sea. Somewhere between carried on my journey, “The heavens declare the Brindisi, Italy, where I’d boarded the ferry, glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His and the mainland of Greece, where I planned hands.” to reunite with my family, who were already vacationing there. What I didn’t know, as the I sat up. I had never seen so many stars in my waves rocked the boat back and forth, was that life! Away from the light pollution of cities and I was also somewhere between my past and my suburbs, I realized the countless stars foretold in future, my stable suburban American childhood the textbooks and planetariums of my youth had and an adulthood stamped by expatriation. been blazing overhead all along. I walked over to the side of the boat, and I looked out toward I walked over to a bench and lay down flat on the inky Ionian to discover the stars drenching my back, my travel-weary vertebrae resettling. the vault of the sky, from north to south and east
The Skies Proclaim the Work of His Hands Stephanie Nikolopoulos 40
