Tuesday, October 05, 2021

Light / heavy

 


It is a beautiful day.

Not where I am.

Perhaps not where you are, either.

But for somebody, somewhere, the sun is shining, the stars are aligned, the kind of day when it is a joy to be alive.

Genesis describes the sky as a slab, a vault. The prophet Leonard Cohen sang There Is A Crack In Everything, That Is How The Light Gets In. There is a crack in the leaden sky as I walk beneath it, and a diffuse light is getting in, but mostly what the hairline cracks in the vault of the sky is letting in today is rain, the waters above the sky.

Genesis also speaks of the wind/Spirit/breath of God, of moving air as divine presence. Moreover, Genesis describes human beings as creatures made from the humus of the earth, animated by the breath of God. But today, there is no movement to the air, no wind to drive the heavy clouds that have settled in for the duration. Today there is no breath animating me, and I am clod-like, heavy, rain-soaked clay.

This is not to say that it is not a beautiful day, somewhere, nor that God does not breathe life, but simply to acknowledge the full range, and the horizon—at times expansive, at times closing in on us—of our experience as creatures within creation.

 

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