When you were born, I took all of forever and pushed and squeezed with all of my might to fit it into one little capsule. That was all that made sense to my linear way of thinking. I wasn’t sure how to comprehend you as: an eternity more than the present moment. So I did my best to squish you into an eternity . . . in the present moment.
But I could never secure the capsule tight enough. I could never manage to compact your identity solely into now. Always and always it was bursting back open – catapulting your existence backward and rocketing it forward.
And it was miraculous; and overwhelming -- glimpsing, in those explosive openings, that, despite how it battered my weak logic, you were all of forever before and all of forever ahead: A soul. Unable to fit into one enclosed definition of the present.
But the only thoughts and words at my disposal to make sense of or describe any of it . . . were words and thoughts created from time -- ill suited for the task.
Still, sometimes, when I simply quit rebelling at what I couldn’t grasp and let go of my insistence on mortal clarity, something marvelous would happen. My own mind would expand beyond it’s stakes and bounds – and my own soul would meld into the unquestionable rightness of our eternities woven so clearly from long before time, and onward unendingly, and all swirling perfectly together in my clumsy understanding of the present.
And, in those brief moments, nothing made more clear and unassailable sense than holding all of forever in my arms.
2 comments:
Oh little Hansie. So much of meaning in that baby self. If only we could see it in everyone! And in ourselves.
Oh yes. Good point. Why not in my own self?? And even as my kids get older that clearness so evident in their baby self gets harder to capture.
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