A core memory from my Hebridean childhood is located in winter’s depths. Whilst dashing out to play after our evening meal, running up the garden path, breath frosty on the clear cold air, a glance at the pitch dark sky stopped me dead. A magical swirling dance of colour was washing the Northern sky with translucent radiance. I held my breath, friends forgotten,  gazing for a long time at the wonderful display. Gradually, inevitably, it faded and vanished. I remained entranced for a very long time afterwards.

Subsequent adult reading provided a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of the aurora borealis. But science cannot explain the sense of wonder and awe which the Northern Lights have evoked in countless numbers of us since our remote ancestors scanned the skies, seeing the Divine in natural beauty.

This first experience of awe has remained etched on memory. It imprinted on my soul, at a very young age, a deep intuitive sense that there is a sublime mystery at the core of the interplay between light and dark.

Several decades later, my ambition is to witness the Northern Lights again before I die. Perhaps I will, maybe not.

In the meantime, one can access and enjoy many, many film clips of this wonderful natural phenomenon via the internet. This morning on Twitter, thanks to Jeff Faria @PatriotsOfMars, I came across the finest film of the Northern Lights that I have ever seen. It is titled

Polar Spirits: An Epic Northern Lights Time-Lapse Video

Do treat your soul to an uplift by watching this clip. Forget the Measurers and the reductionists for a few minutes. Whatever they may do their best to tell us, there are and always will be sublimely mysterious dimensions to life for which materialist science with all its brilliance can provide only one dimension of the answer…..