Whispers Beneath a Cathedral of Light

What do you call the soundless gasp of a soul when it sees something too beautiful to bear? What is the word for the feeling of your chest opening as if it might contain the whole night sky? Do you know how it is to stand in the shadow of heaven’s own breath, trembling in awe at how little we truly understand of beauty? If the universe ever loved me, it was in that moment… that night I first saw the aurora borealis in Norway.

It felt like the sky itself had decided to write me a personal love letter. One moment, it was just night, cold air on my cheeks, quiet darkness above, and then, as if the universe blinked, the heavens unfurled in rivers of ghostly luminescence. I swear there was a hush so deep it had never been heard before, a silence brimming with unspoken lullabies. I closed my eyes, letting that silence sink into me, unsure whether to smile or weep. The air around me seemed to hum with an energy so ancient, so holy, it was as though the earth and sky had fallen in love, and I was their witness. For a moment, I simply stood there, hardly breathing, allowing the cold to settle into my bones. In that instant, I felt as though God pressed a fingertip against my heart, letting me taste a beauty too grand for mortal words.

They were more than lights; I call them “celestia-sighs,” or perhaps I’d call them “alethalights” a name I invented in my wonder, because how else to describe that living tapestry of emeralds and violets and whites so profound they felt like the color of hidden memories? For an instant, I forgot the cold biting at my cheeks; all I felt was my own heartbeat echoing in that quiet dusk. They didn’t just dance; they *ached*… I blinked, remembering to breathe… They trembled and quivered across the dome of night, as though the sky was drawing its breath in slow, trembling wonder. Each swirl was an ancient story, each flicker a secret told by the universe in a language older than time. I can still feel it now: my chest couldn’t contain the magnitude of gratitude I carried at that moment. I stood there, breath caught, eyes wide, knees weak, marveling that I was alive and allowed to witness this cosmic ballet.

It was a feeling that made me want to weep and laugh and pray all at once, like I was a living paradox, tiny and insignificant yet chosen to see the face of infinite grace. My tears came without permission, tears that tasted of every hope I had ever dared to hold. Thankfulness coursed through me, too vast for my small body. Even if I tried to speak, words would have collapsed under the weight of that reverent joy. Only God truly knows how my spirit shouted in silent, sacred awe. I still wonder how the human heart can experience so much light without shattering.

I fell in love with nature that night, wholeheartedly and forever. Norway’s rugged mountains crouched in the distance, guardians of a secret realm, their peaks lit by that unearthly glow. My breath caught in my throat, and I felt suddenly small beneath that expanse of stars. It felt like the land itself cradled me, whispering, “Look, child. Look at what wonders exist.” In that one moment, I understood the endlessness of creation, how beauty is the language in which the divine speaks to us, how every cold gust of wind on my cheeks was a gentle reminder that I was alive to feel it. There, at the edge of the Arctic, under that shimmering sky, I felt the planet breathing, and I breathed with it. The darkness was no longer empty; it was pregnant with promise.

Even now, I struggle to believe I truly stood beneath that swirling majesty. It was as if the cosmos offered me its hand, leading me into some hidden place of ecstasy and grace. I almost forgot to breathe, lost in the flicker and flow of color. And oh, how lucky, how unbelievably, impossibly lucky, I was to be there, at that precise moment, in that remote corner of our world. I knew, then, that the aurora wasn’t just a natural phenomenon. It was life reminding me that behind the veil of ordinary existence, there’s a symphony of wonder waiting to be glimpsed. It was creation’s soft voice saying: “Yes, you are small. But you are part of something boundless.”

I could never fully put those colors into our ordinary language. They exist in some realm of indescribable poetry, like hidden verses of the universe’s lullaby. I paused, letting the cold air settle on my skin, aware of each breath I drew. I can only share the shadow of what I felt, a pale echo of the real thing. But my heart remembers, and every time I think about those nights, I feel tears threatening to fall again, not from sadness but from the overflowing gratitude that saturates my soul. Only God knows how deeply I cherish that memory and how fiercely I wish I could carve it into my bones, how every fragment of me wanted to kneel, to scream, to whisper my gratitude to the heavens for showing me this, for letting me *feel* what can never be spoken. My hand found its way to my chest, as if trying to hold in the wonder. I was small, yes, but in that moment, I was infinite. I was everything.

In that moment, standing in the hush of Norway’s winter, I fell in love with the universe, with possibility, with the knowledge that beauty this raw and generous can exist. I couldn’t speak; the words hovered somewhere in my throat, refusing to form. I hope that when someone reads this, even if it’s just in the echo of words, they taste the same ache of wonder and cry out of joy. Because that’s what the aurora did for me: it drew tears of happiness, taught me new words never spoken, and left me with a tender longing to live in perpetual awe of a world too magnificent for mere mortal speech.

There is no word for what I felt, no human syllables could capture the collision of wonder, humility, and joy that surged through me. I felt my heartbeat slow, as though the night itself was breathing with me. It was as if the aurora in combination with Norways splendid landscapes reached into me and stirred the very essence of what it means to be alive, to exist, to see. My heart swelled with the awareness of how impossibly lucky I was to be here, on this earth, at this precise time, in this exact place, to see something so staggeringly divine, as if I had been invited into the holy chambers of the universe itself. I let out a trembling exhale, grateful I’d been chosen by fate to stand here. Thank you to the universe, thank you to time, thank you to every choice that led me here, to this exact moment beneath this cathedral of light and a big thank you to God, because for the first time, I understood what it meant to witness a miracle. Not to hear of it, not to imagine it, but to *stand beneath it* and feel it move through me.