Limitless

In the dark, we stand in the small room between his bedroom and mine and his father's. The doors are open to our left and right, giving full sight of each adjoining space. He reaches intently around my neck and turns his face toward me; his cheek rests on my shoulder, my chin rests on his little arm. Our ears press together and, like trying to hear the hidden seas in a shell, we listen to the common rhythm of our breath.

Suddenly, my feet are resting on sand as I hold my child and gaze upon the roiling ocean, black beneath the night sky. Comets fly overhead to the roaring waves, unrelenting in their ancient motion. Our upright stance unites Earth and Stars, Sea and Sky - earth, fire, water, air, elements that comprise our complex mortal bodies. In that space where there is no end to any direction, the limitless universe makes itself known again.

I feel my son's weight in my arms and the awe of our human task to give meaning to the beauty. Our alignment connects the parallel matters of infinite depth and breadth. Blessed be you, Holy Matter, which leaves me more aware of the certain light we humans bring to the harmony of things. This place of gratitude - for the night and the water, for my son and his tenderness, for imagination and mystery - is, like our spirits, neither wholly immaterial nor perfectly substantive. As far as we know, it is a new frontier in the galaxy.

As I settle my child back to sleep, I find myself whispering an abridged bedtime story: "You are the universe become conscious of itself." Moonshine bathes him in cosmic light. I leave him curled in the soft comfort of a blanket like a turtle resolutely leaves her nest of eggs in the sand: hopeful of the life that will find its way again to the Source, of another generation to carry us deeper and farther.