I discovered a way of life Saturday night.

Friends of ours from church invited us over for a cook-out. He works one of those move-around jobs and is here for a year on projects connected to the oil fields. They live in a big ol’ camper at a KOA.

I drove out of town 20 miles and there I was, rows and rows of RVs, campers, and trailers, with a pecan orchard on one side and plains on the others.

The air was cool but not cold, like it is in these parts in October. The burgers and brats drew in a couple of stray kids and a neighbor from Mississippi. A retired couple waved.

It was peaceful and friendly. I saw for the first time why people like to RV. It is for the freemasonry.  These people were neighbors the way most neighbors aren’t.

When it was full dark, we wandered over a few rows to where a retired NASA fellow had set up a telescope to show the stars. A British couple and two young airmen joined the group. The man showed us Venus, Mars, and Saturn. And then Antares. ”That light is 600-years old,” he said.” Columbus had not sailed yet.”

The immensity of space is right there above us. Everything we do, we do under the presence of endless majesty.

Then–I suppose it was the melancholy, long withdrawing roar of trucks on the highway that brought the eternal note of sadness in–I reflected that under these stars, this night lovers were saying vicious petty things to each other, drunks were driving, beatings, cheatings, rape, murder.

Under these stars, pogroms have happened, and pogroms will happen again.