
05 Aug The Mundane and Sublime are Inseparable
A LUMINOUS CRESCENT MOON hung in the sky and illuminated the water, the road, the hills in the darkness.
As my music played, I drove down the highway of my hometown.
I thought about my life, what I’m doing, how things are changing. The beauty of the moon and the sky moved me deeply — the sky hazy, the moon bold.
The night sky has this effect. It never ceases to astound me. This moment, driving down an empty road under the white, nebulous light of the moon, expresses who I am and what I love more profoundly than words could.
I don’t know why — perhaps it’s that as my spirit connects to something beyond what we can comprehend, life becomes simple.
It’s as if the moon draws the essence of my being; my mind fell into a state of ease and wonder.
The worries and faults and questions of daily life lose significance when we can appreciate the mystery which envelops all; meaning expands and a fresh wave of understanding washes over you.
Beauty, thought, music, memories, solitude, my path — it all flooded me at once, and perhaps I don’t know where I’m heading, but I feel something intense here, a range of emotions which tell me I’m alive.
Maybe we’re not here to have our questions answered. Perhaps we’re here to have the experience of facing the unanswerable.
“What is there of the divine in a load of bricks?” Writes the transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Journals.
“What is there of the divine in a barber’s shop? … Much. All.”
Every day comprises notes like this if we’re willing to stop and notice. A partner’s hug touches the depths of our soul.
The sun hits the flowers in the garden in the morning and the color can’t be real. Tears come from somewhere deep.
These moments make us question why we’re on this planet, and in that, our hearts beat with that of the world’s, the beating heart of many who question and wonder the same; that wonder, that depth of feeling, shall sustain us through the trials of the day.
It’s in us, it’s wherever we look, it’s in the questions themselves which don’t need to be answered.
It’s in the stack of papers and the morning commute, the bowl of fruit and bed sheets.
We’re alive — the mundane and sublime are inseparable.
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