A Life Like the Sky

January Theme: Abundance

Tuesday, January 5, 2021

 In these elder years, it has slowly become clear to me that my life, which I’ve usually thought of as being separate, isolated, and fragile, and which I’ve been carefully protecting for 7+ decades, is not separate or isolated, and does not need ‘my’ protection. I see that my life is not mine at all, but is part of, and belongs to, the endless universe, the way a drop of water belongs to the ocean or a wisp of a breeze belongs to the everlasting wind. I now see that I no more need protection than does a drop of ocean water. The drop drifts with its vast ocean, a breeze works within the infinite winds, and I move as the universe moves, swirling along with the currents of life the way a star streams along in the immensity of the sky. I do still sometimes like to pretend that I, by myself, perform and produce, but I know, now, that it’s the endless universe (some people call it ‘God’) that always does the work. I see that I am part of something so large it makes ‘my’ small, artificial, isolated life, the one I invented in boyhood and have been caring for ever since, seem utterly fictitious and silly.  When I look up at the sky, I get a much better sense of the true vastness and abundance of life, or Life, of which Hamilton Salsich is one of innumerable freely flowing and inseparable elements.  

Here are some view of the sky we saw over Barn Island on our walk today – so vast, but no more vast and overflowing than every single moment.

 
 
THE ENDLESS SKY
(about Shay M., 28, Blessings, CT)
 
He says he sees a sky inside himself,
a sky that has no boundaries, no end
of lovely clearness and amazing darkness.
He says he tries to live within this sky,
to feel himself arising on the wings of life 
and soaring where the winds will take him. 
All his life he's felt this largeness
in himself and all the world, 
and he laughs sometimes,
and even leaps and dances, 
when he realizes just how huge his life,
and all lives, really are. 
Trouble is, he doesn't often see this vastness, 
but instead sees smallness and separation, 
and lives those days in fear and disconnection, 
but he knows the truth,
that endlessness is really all there is,
that love and tolerance and life itself
cannot be measured, that there is a sky
with no beginning and no end, 
within and all around him, 
and all he has to do 
is awaken and recognize it 
and then easily and cheerfully
lift up his wings.