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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Explaining the Sky

How do you explain the sky to a blind person?

You might attempt to describe that it is like an overturned bowl over the ground. It’s filled with light during the day, because of the sun. It’s usually blue, but can be different colors at sunrise and sunset. Sometimes it has white or grey clouds, which come in various shapes and sizes. At night, it is dark, except for the stars and moon…

Well, the blind person would have a lot of questions about this description. How do you explain the vocabulary that you just used: light, dark, sun, moon, stars, clouds, sunrise, sunset, blue, white, grey.

To further complicate things, a person who has flown in an airplane would have a slightly more nuanced explanation of the sky than a person who has only experienced the view from the ground. Similarly, astronauts who have been in outer space probably have an even different perspective than the rest of us. They might explain that the sky is just our earthly term for the visible parts of the atmosphere. It isn’t really blue, it just appears that way because of the way light is scattered. The clouds are not in the same plane as the sun or the stars. The sun doesn’t really rise or set, it just appears that way from where we see it. It’s actually the Earth that revolves around the sun. The more you think about it, the more difficult it is to explain…

Describing faith is even more complicated.

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