I was on the trail yesterday - alone as usual. It was cool and it started to mist. I watched the tiny droplets of water hit the earth in front of me. I was amazed at how these tiny, almost insignificant beads of water affected the ground beneath my feet. It wasn’t long before the path in front of me was dotted with a maze of wet land and dry land. Creating nature’s own mosaic. And there I was perpetually stuck in the middle. Neither earth not sky but affected by both...never able to free myself of either force...
Earth is where my life happens. It is my grounding. My home. It is the place that I dwell and do this thing called life. I am here. Feet planted. Plodding and trudging through whatever happenstance comes my way. Sometimes the earth shakes beneath my feet, but rarely and usually without import. Rarely do I feel its thunder or movement...It is just there, a firm foundation for my life.
Sky is where my thoughts live. They are always hovering somewhere else. Somewhere up there. They are lofty and grand and desperately seeking something other than what I find here on earth. I am seeking answers to questions that only the sky seems to hold. The sky the perfect antecedent to earth, ethereal, unstable, forever changing. It just keeps moving and there is nothing mankind can do to stop it.
And I am long in between the two states. I am neither earth nor sky but I seem to need both. I crave them and seek them daily. They my counterbalance to the contained existence my body lives. Earth provides me beauty and grace and a hardness that is everywhere. Earth reminds me that I am at the top of the food chain, except when I walk a narrow mountain path, my dog alerts and I know that my upper food chain status might be challenged. A so called lesser being could be moments away from showing me that I am very unstable in my pinnacle position.
Sky shows me how tiny I am. How relatively insignificant while at the same time being vital. Sky reminds me to tap into the ethers for a connection to the larger world, the world that lives in constant juxtaposition with earth. Sky shows me where I can live only if I try. Nothing is certain in sky, the view constantly changing. Always and forever just out of my reach. Something to behold but never possess.
And I live this life constantly between the two. My feet never leaving earth but my head always in the clouds. Sky having just as much import to my day as earth but in such a different way. I can see that I need both and that without one the other would cease to exist. Their interdependence obvious to the casual observer but their import only seen by those who seek.
Where is my place in the middle?
Where am I to land - how close to earth and how far from sky?
I feel like the tiny particles of sky falling on the dry earth...having momentary impact, but never summoning up enough of myself to create a downpour. I am not capable of great flooding or instability. I just keep raining down me in tiny driblets and wondering why I feel so scattered. But when I still myself and see that I am always both earth and sky, my place between the two comes into clearer view. I am earth and I am sky. I walk on the earth but my soul belongs upwards, forever seeking sky to soften the hardest parts of me.
May you be so lucky to take a walk today...see your own earth and your own sky and your place betwixt the two. May you find yourself there - suspended, if even for a moment, between the magnificent earth and eternal sky.
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