The Space In Between

The moon shone so brightly this morning I thought someone had left a light on for me.  As I stepped outside into the velvety cloak of the early hour, I almost had to squint.  Brain foggy and thoughts still muddled from a night of fitful sleep, it was just my heart and the moon and the brilliance of the stars. 

The aimless hours between night and morning lose shape in the stillness and the quiet.  The space feels unruffled, calm, like the end of an exhale, that perfect pause at the bottom of your breath.  It is the place from which peace is born, the place from which love springs, the place that is the origin and the anchor and the beating heart of the universe.

There is no story here, awash in moon bath.  There are no words.  I am nameless, bodiless, ethereal.  I am no one and I am everyone and I am everything.  The moon, the stars, the black of night, the big wise willow tree sleeping beneath the hillside, we are all alive – and that is enough.  That is everything.

For now.

Until the sun rises and the day swallows the mellifluous sky and my thoughts awake with the noisy business of obligation and responsibility.  Isn’t it interesting, this dichotomy of worlds?  The perfect tranquil shadowy calm and the raucous jolt of the daily grind?  There is so much turbulence in the world of objects – the hustle and bustle, the constant worrying and unease.  We are always in a state of wanting, always lacking, always in crisis.

Life is by nature disorderly.  It is loud and full and erratic.  It is a science experiment within a universe made up of matter, empty space and atoms that are constantly smashing together.  It is the nature of “things” to collide, to cause friction, to disrupt.  It is biology, ecology, physiology.  The real challenge is finding stillness in the chaos.  The challenge is settling into the empty space even when the pieces of our lives seem to be crashing together around us. 

We easily lose sight of the space in between, the quiet pockets amid the conflict.  But this empty space is ever-present.  It is pervasive.  And it is just as much in the nature of this universe to command the space for peace and stillness as it is for the disorder. There is a gentle, uninterrupted piece of real estate inside every one of us – right now – that is as quiet as the night and as clear and bright as the moon-sodden sky.  It doesn’t go away with the rising sun.  It doesn’t disappear into the clatter of life’s challenges.

Let yourself open into the space of peace that is always near.  Look up into the star-speckled sky and let your eyes soften to the dark wide breadth of the stillness in between.