Mike: In rented RVs we went in search of a vanishing sight.

Humanity's most wondrous spectacle once available for all to view, but now found only in remote locations, like the mountains of eastern Nevada, and the canyons of southern Utah.

What set us in motion along these lonely roads was the lure of seeing the night sky undiminished by light pollution, an awe-inspiring sight to be sure, especially when coupled with what we saw along the way.

An experience that elevated our senses to another level of amazement while raising even more questions about all that's left to discover.

Somebody a long time ago mentioned the concept to me and he called it a universe of abundance.

And he said that every question has an answer and it's out there.

Every medical question, every math question, the answers are there, the abundant universe has all the answers, everything we need or want, is out there, and it's not to say that we're going to find it, because there are questions that will never be answered, but the answer is there.

For me when I know that the answer is there it makes me seek answers, and the great part of that is you might be looking for an answer to one question and stumble upon an answer to a question that you hadn't even asked yourself, and you find things that you weren't looking for, that change your life.

To rise above our condition.

To depart from our grounded reality.

Since the beginning, humans have not only wondered what was on the other side of the mountain, they've gone there, finding a way, inventing a vehicle.

Sailing for the new world while never losing sight or curiosity about the other worlds.

This desire for information, understanding and exploration has always been with us.

The tools of discovery evolving over time to prove or disprove theories and beliefs rooted in humanity's fascination with the heavens above.

Chicago's Adler Planetarium houses a vast collection of astronomical instruments and artifacts.

Items overseen by curator Dr.

Pedro Raposo, who realizes that we will never know all that could be known.

Not by a long shot.

But we keep looking.

Keep guessing.

Keep hoping for the eternally elusive empirical evidence solving the greatest mystery of all time.

And if that evidence is never found?

Pedro: Certainly people can create their own understanding.

Mike: We can ponder it.

Pedro: Yes exactly.

Mike: But can we ever really know it?

Pedro: I don't know but perhaps in the process, even if we don't get to know ultimately what all of this is about, we will learn many interesting things on the way, and create many interesting things on the way.

And I think that's to a great extent what astronomy, cosmology, science is about.

Mike: Then there is religion.

Theology.

Philosophy.

The metaphysical concept of the Unmoved Mover.

Theisms of singular or multiple deities.

Musings both spiritual and intellectual, hinging on a leap of faith.

Franciscan priest Father Edward Foley is a professor of spirituality, liturgy and music at Chicago's Catholic Theological Union.

It is his contention that scientific discovery begins with wonder.

Fr.

Foley: It seems to me that scientists teach us that they have to imagine, they have to imagine what Hubble is going to take a picture of, or what a black hole looks like, or how quickly this thing we launch out of the earth is four years later going to finally hit a moon outside of Neptune some place.

So it seems to me that the empirical folk teach us that to do even good empirical work, you need an imagination, you have to be curious.

And it seems to me that the great philosophers were curious.

They were, they understood that it couldn't all be understood and therefore, you can't explain a mystery, but you can broach it.

And it seems to me what a good philosopher does, or what a good artist does, an effective artist or teacher, is bring people to the edge of mystery and let them encounter it.

But you can't control it or contain it or explain it.

Mike: Awe needs no explanation.

Just the open-minded willingness to accept as fact that moments of amazement and wonder often arise untethered from the facts, unencumbered by justification.

We left Chicago expecting to find awe, but not knowing where exactly to find it.

Which camp ground?

Which canyon?

Which field?

Which forest?

In the great basin region of eastern Nevada, we came upon a mountain road, and took it up and up and up, more than 10,000 feet up.

After finding a nearly empty campground parking lot, my traveling companions, photographers Corey Lillard and Jamie Fleischel, along with producer Mary Kay Wall, set out on foot.

Jamie: We just happened to be right across from a trailhead, and we just walked up this rocky hill for about a mile and a half and came upon this.

Mike: And there's nobody here.

Jamie: There's not a soul here.

Mike: The abundant universe has everything.

If you believe that, and are willing to search and explore, unbound by detailed plans or itineraries, what can be discovered, and what can be learned, has profound, life-altering implications.

Mary Kay: I think it's an experience that humbles you because you are before something that is so magnificent but it also, you feel honored to be a part of this universe and I think because of that, it's inspiring because you, you know, you want to live up to that beauty, live up to the magnificence, it calls you to something higher.

Mike: A challenge met literally with the use of a drone camera.

As for the photographic technique best suited to capture the spectacular beauty of the night sky... Corey: Instead of shooting video, we are shooting 30 second images, in a number of sequences.

So let's say we shoot over the course of 3 hours, and we'll take around 345 photos, each of them 30 seconds, and then you take those photos and essentially you make a video out of those.

And what you can see, you can see almost more than what we can see with our naked eye.

Jamie: Yeah.

Mike: And what a stunning place to do that.

Corey: That's going to be the Milky Way.

Mike: What?

Tonight?

Corey: At 2 a.m.

Mike: Right there?

Corey: Right there.

Mike: So this is the spot.

Corey: This is easily the spot.

This is the spot where spots are made.

Mike: We would sleep in shifts, an hour here, an hour there.

A taxing schedule that would normally lead to a bit of complaining.

Nobody was complaining about staying awake for this.

Mary Kay: I knew we were going to see magnificent things, but it has so far exceeded my expectations.

Sitting there under the stars, looking at shooting stars, and satellites and billions of stars.

Mike: Awe.

Mary Kay: Awe.

Awe.

Jamie: It's hard to actually comprehend what you're looking at, looking out to the Milky Way, to the other sections of our galaxy, which are millions of light-years away.

Yeah, It's crazy.

It's incomprehensible.

It's sort of a badge of honor to be able to do this.

To be able to go and seek this out and see it and then capture it, because I think what we've captured is really, I've never done anything like it in my life.

Corey: The lack of sleep, I don't even feel it.

I've been napping as I go, but it's so worth it.

There's no reason to want to sleep.

Mike: Or to stop searching.

I'm 67 years old and you know, the clock is ticking for sure, and seeing this kind of stuff, seeing these surroundings is, I don't know, it's a cliche I guess to say it feeds your soul, but it does.

Especially in southern Utah where the natural beauty of Bryce Canyon draws people from all over the world.

Many of them staying at Ruby's Inn, a sprawling complex of hotel rooms, campgrounds, restaurants, souvenir shops, and more.

General Manager Lance Syrett's family were early pioneers of the area.

Lance: We've actually been here longer on this site than there has been a national park over there.

You know, my great grandfather Ruby, when he first came here, this was his ranch, and he didn't even know Bryce Canyon existed, because we like to say, it wasn't a park, it wasn't protected, so we've always felt like we've been stewards to protect, that's our asset, people don't come to us, they don't come to Ruby's Inn because we're Ruby's Inn, they come because we are on the doorstep of Bryce Canyon.

Mike: Through the years there has been much debate about the value of national parks and whether or not the price of maintaining and preserving them is too steep.

Lance: If you got that question, go visit one, and you immediately understand why they need to be protected.

Mike: Does the same hold true for the shrinking number of locales where the night sky can still be seen in all of its glory?

Do they need to be protected?

There are not many truly dark places left in the United States because of light pollution.

In the suburbs of Chicago where I live, we can see, I don't know, ten stars maybe.

And so we stop, I stop looking up because I don't see anything.

And I think you forget that the beauty of the stars and planets and all the rest is something that humans have had in their lives since the beginning of time.

On a quiet hilltop just outside of Bryce Canyon National Park, amateur astronomer Kevin Poe is betting his life savings that once people become reacquainted with a sight that most have lost sight of, they will begin to understand why he and many others believe that this is an issue deserving of our concern.

Some rural areas remain relatively free of light pollution.

Kevin: But there are truly few places left on earth like southern Utah where we can show with backyard-sized telescopes the kinds of things that would normally require research-sized telescopes, and it's all just a function of the quality of our darkness as a measure of how far from civilization we are, but also how high above sea level, how dry our air is, all these factors come in concert, but I think the real reason is we love this and we've spent years and years perfecting our craft to make it absolutely enjoyable.

Mike: His rustic Dark Ranger Observatory is designed for small groups yearning for a hands-on personal introduction to the stars.

Oh wow... the ring.

I mean it's, I've never... That's amazing.

Kevin: Most places you go, the first thing you say, don't touch the telescope and they give you a long list of no's, but we've got good quality, durable equipment here, and we want people to actually have that feel, to be connected to the device that's then connecting them to the universe.

Mike: A natural bond broken by progress.

The night once owned us.

Setting the rhythms for our daily routines.

Marking our seasons.

Charting our journeys.

Stoking our fears.

And stirring our wishes.

Now, we own the night.

A deal brokered by inventive minds who illuminated humanity to the benefits of longer days, bigger cities, more industrial capacity, and less sleep.

The economic return has been staggering, but at what ecological cost to nocturnal or migratory creatures?

And what about the emotional and spiritual toll?

What are we missing when we miss seeing that?

Kevin: We're missing a big connection to who we are as a species.

The best stories ever told were put in the sky and if you really want to immortalize your heroes and important morals of a culture and to say, to the next generation, who we are, and what it means to be us, you put that story in the sky.

Mike: A narrative created by our ancient ancestors to graft meaning onto their often calamitous earthly existence.

Was misfortune foreshadowed by the meteor shower?

Was the lunar eclipse a signal from the gods to move or stay put?

The early people gazed upon those fixed arrangements of glowing lights and perceived the outlines of familiar forms.

An archer.

A scorpion.

A crab.

A ram.

All part of a mythological fable bursting with larger than life gods and godlike figures succumbing to small-minded humanlike behavior.

Triggered by fear, jealousy, anger, revenge, it's an epic story, but how did it begin?

Who or what created the creation?

Theologians look to God.

While many scientists look for proof.

Kevin: You know what happened before the Big Bang, the professional answer is that it's not known or knowable.

It almost sounds like laziness.

But it really is a strange thing to ponder.

If you don't have any way of understanding how you could perceive something before, the easiest thing is just to say it's unknowable.

Fr.

Foley: I agree that it's unknowable, but as a person of faith, God is unknowable in some ways, that all of these things we hold for, that's the difference between believing and knowing.

And we can't know everything.

And it seems to me that one of the gifts of spiritual insight or faith is being able to imagine something that we really don't know about.

Imagine an after life.

Imagine a loving God that we can only, we can only taste through parents or friends, or, and it seems to me that it's the essence of faith, precisely not knowing, but still being reasonable.

And I think that's the challenge about how does one maintain the ability to still think and reason and at the same time, reason about something that can't completely or ever be known.

Mike: The scientific version of that question was made evident to me during a 2009 visit to Chicago's Adler Planetarium, where Dr.

Mark SubbaRao was directing the space visualization laboratory, through a project to map the universe, a job he will never complete, a job no human will ever complete.

Mark: We see how insignificant we are.

We're just one star out of a few hundred billion, one galaxy out of hundreds of billions of galaxies, but the craziest thing is we figured this stuff out, we made this model of the universe, that's pretty darn impressive.

In some ways we are significant because we figured out how insignificant we are.

Mike: Insignificant if we stick to the numbers.

But as humans, we are cognizant of what it means to be human.

To contemplate, speculate, ruminate, about being much more than a number.

When you look upon the heavens yourself, do you feel diminished or do you feel empowered by your spot and your little place in this whole order?

Pedro: Neither diminished, nor empowered, I feel privileged for having the chance to have that side, to ask questions and to be marveled by the heavens.

I think it's a great privilege.

Mike: To be marveled is to be filled with wonder and awe.

A uniquely human emotion, triggered by a sensory encounter with something profoundly powerful or moving.

From a family's first glimpse of a newborn baby, to a four year old girl's first encounter with a movie hero stand-in at a small town grocery store promo event.

And then there is music.

We invited Chicago musicians Teri O'Brien, Molly Blythe, and Jeffery Silva of the band Bronte Fall, to play simple renditions of two classic pieces written in the 1800s.

Johannes Brahms' Good Evening, Goodnight.

More commonly known as Brahms' Lullaby.

And Silent Night.

First performed during a Christmas Eve mass in a small Austrian town.

The lyrics were written by the local parish priest Father Joseph Mohr.

The melody by his choirmaster, and friend, Xaver Gruber.

And what inspires a musician to arrange a limited number of notes in a certain pattern resulting in a melody that stirs the soul?

Molly: There's a connection to the past, something bigger than myself.

Teri: It comes from inspiration you can't explain, it's like an untouchable thing.

Jeffery: I think these composers also had a hint of the eternal, and had a hint that their music would perhaps transcend generations.

Fr.

Foley: In my first life I thought I was going to be a musician, actually my first graduate degree was in music, and then I found out you had to practice, so, but I remember studying Bach as a student and saying how did he do that?

What was the mind?

There is so much order, and yet it's so imaginative.

And, it's, where does the gift come from?

Where does the gift of the storyteller?

How did Michelangelo even envision what he was going to do on that ceiling?

It's mind-boggling.

And it's an encounter, which is another encounter with mystery, and I think what contemporary philosophers have taught us is that the mystery is not only looking up into the sky, the mystery is looking into the face of any woman or man and seeing your sister or brother.

And when you look into the face of a great storyteller, or hear the voice of a Pavarotti, or, and you say if humankind can explode into that kind of artistry, what's God like?

If those are glimmers, if those are little sequins on this incredible tapestry that we call God, it's, it's... we get a little taste.

But we are left wondering.

Mike: So you think those are glimmers of God?

Fr.

Foley: Oh, I, for me they are.

No question.

I mean, and it doesn't mean that the artist has to be a believer, that it doesn't mean that Beethoven or that Chopin or that, you know, Mike: Bob Dylan Fr.

Foley: Bob Dylan.

Or, yeah, it doesn't mean that they themselves have to be believing behind the music, or behind the artistry.

One of the things contemporary philosophers tell us, like Paul Ricoeur, is once you create something, it's got a life of its own, apart from whatever the novelist was hoping to do, once the novel is out there, once the painting is out there, and that's why that encounter, the reader, the experience that's mine, that creates a reality that's outside the control of the artist, and in that I get to explore my world and a community gets to explore their world, and if they decide to, they can see glimmers of the infinite, and they can see more than just human brilliance or genius, but even God.

Mike: The Divine Orchestrator of Everything, say those who believe.

Scientific explanations aside, whenever there is wonder to behold, there is a sense within the flock of an unspoken call to order.

The invisible baton of an all powerful conductor, setting the meter, dictating the rhythm for a whirling, twirling planetary waltz, in precise orbital harmony with celestial partners too numerous to count.

Let there be light.

Then, let there be awe.

Fr.

Foley: It's a defining element of humanity.

And it seems to me that any culture or society or family or tribe that is nurtured without awe, or is forced to live such a subsistent existence, that they don't have the luxury of experiencing awe, that what we've done is that we've deprived them of a fundamental element of being human.

Mike: Ironically, it was the luxury of modern life made possible by our creative vision and technological brilliance that caused us to lose sight of our greatest source of awe, and the profound perspective gained when viewing the distant Milky Way while reminding ourselves that we reside within the Milky Way.

Pedro: Looking above and trying to understand what's up there, and in a sense we are also up there because we know the earth is just another planet, so we're also part of it, we're not in the center, things are not revolving around us, we are not in the center of it.

Mike: To look up to something, or someone, is to show admiration.

More and more these days we find ourselves looking down.

We have discovered a new universe and it fits in the palm of our hand.

Now, we are the stars.

We are the constellations.

Everything revolves around us.

And what I'm trying to do is remind myself to put that away and look up, or look out there.

Look at other people, look at things that you might see in every day life, or search out things like this that you don't see every day, and it's like plugging yourself into a battery charger and lifting your spirits.

Fueling your emotions.

What do you think?

Mary Kay: It's so awesome it makes you cry.

It really does.

It's so magnificent.

Mike: The older we get, the more we tend to play it cool, acting as if we've seen it all, while convincing ourselves that too much time spent in search of awe and wonder is childish and impractical.

Kevin: You know you always hear about the awe of a child, and I think that's a shame that we look at it as some sort of age determining way of existing.

I mean, to celebrate the natural world, to have a curiosity for understanding, to find yourself in the moment, not always trying to figure out what's happening next, I think all those things go hand in and, and it brings peace to me, and it brings motivation to me, to continue learning and I guess maybe to be childlike, but my point is, it's not something that's unique to children, it's just something that maybe we've lost, or we tend to lose as grown-ups.

Mike: What are we missing when we don't know what we are missing?

The International Dark Sky movement is working to curb global light pollution with the goal of reilluminating humanity's view of the heavens so we might better see ourselves.

We need darkness to observe the light.

We need quiet to appreciate the music.

We need death to understand life.

Fr.

Foley: One of the things religion tries to do it seems to me is to say, how do we combine the seemingly contradictory, at least paradoxical elements, like living and dying, or darkness and light, or birth and death, and put them in some kind of constellation where they actually, if they cannot be explained, at least they urge us on and give us hope.

Funding for In Common with Mike Leonard is provided by The Carmel Club Foundation, supporters of the art of storytelling.

The Telling Well is where you can find full episodes of In Common with Mike Leonard along with more stories about common people of uncommon character.

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