We think of stars as celestial beings. And once in a while, they smile at us from the pages of 'People' magazine.
If parents are the fixed stars in the child's universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.
When I was very young, I thought the theatre was a place where higher beings went about their celestial business, as if they knew nothing of ordinary life and its political mysteries.
I have got to the point in my life when a lot of people I know have died or are dying, so I realise that somewhere outside the pearly gates is a queue, shuffling nearer and nearer to the celestial box office.
It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.
I love studying asteroids because they are relatively simple, just rocks in space. They can be understood with physics and described with elegant equations. For the most part, they are serene celestial bodies.
One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.
Grace is the divine assistance or heavenly help each of us desperately needs to qualify for the celestial kingdom. Thus, the enabling power of the Atonement strengthens us to do and be good and to serve beyond our own individual desire and natural capacity.
The planet Mars - crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms - has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planetological theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.
There are angels that receive more interiorly the Divine that goes forth from the Lord, and others that receive it less interiorly; the former are called celestial angels, and the latter spiritual angels.
