WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Sunday, October 24, 2021

FINITE AND INFINITE

         It’s so easy for me to fall back into the belief that life, and everything in it, is completely finite. I spend many hours each day lost in the dream of limitation. I usually see myself as a small, isolated, easily definable ‘object’ in a universe packed with countless similar, separate ‘things’, all bumping against each other with warnings to stay clear. Obviously, it’s an unsettling way to live, and yet I must honestly say that’s it’s been my mode of thinking on most days for most of the years of my life. Fortunately, though, in the last 30+ years I’ve been able to catch marvelous glimpses (though short-lived) of another view of life, one that sets aside all boundaries and presents a life that’s unreservedly boundless, and therefor unreservedly free. In this view, I can see, with joy and relief, the absolute togetherness of everything – no separations whatsoever, just simple and everlasting inseparableness and companionship. I see then that I am a breeze in the fathomless wind of the universe, a ripple in the measureless ocean called ‘life’. When I have this wonderful view – when it comes to me, I should say, as it has this afternoon – all fears and concerns somehow settle down into immeasurable spaciousness,  and life lifts me up as easily as winds lift the limbs of trees. 

IN INFINITE, FL

In Infinite, Florida,
residents say their minds seem boundless,
as if inside them 
a limitless range of secret skies
continuously spreads out. 
Their lives feel like 
panoramas of uncountable possibilities,
and they know their futures 
are as unfathomable
as bottomless oceans.  
One man said life 
left him innumerable gifts each day,
so great that he often 
held his arms up in astonishment. 
A woman said
her satisfaction was enormous, 
as inestimable as the sunset, 
and then she shouted 
and pointed to a sunset 
that she said was as huge  
as her happy life. 

Here we are on a walk yesterday morning on Napatree Beach in Watch Hill, RI …

And here’s a slide show of some scenes from our walk this morning in Elm Grove Cemetery …