The Feel of Grass and Stars
The field is wide and gently sloping. From the highest point where I stand, I see the undulating fall of the landscape all around me. In the dead quiet of the still night I hear the sound of my own breathing. And as my breath goes in and out and in and out I feel the barely perceptible drum of my heart in my chest. Bare feet are pressed into the grass; cool and smooth on the soles of my feet. It’s funny how my mind insists thinking of the grass as green, even though it is not green right now, but a pale blue grey with a gentle shimmer on the blades from the moonlight. Green is the grass for those who sleep after light. Blue is the grass for those who come out at night.
I can feel my body responding to its quiet; it feels undone by the soothing of its blanket; it feels itself enveloped and close.
From this feeling of wellbeing at my centre I gaze upward into the starry sky as a cloud disappears in the distant sky. It leaves an expanse of the deepest of blue, feathered with starry points of light. Those stars are so far away; so distant but so present in that moment with me standing in the field. I feel a part of me stretch out; feel it pulling and reaching up to those stars. It’s the yearning in me that stretches me; that reaches out for a mystery so far away. I yearn to be united with whatever I don’t yet know, with whatever there is still to experience. The longing-stretching of it is sweetly painful to my heart, mingling with fear and trepidation of such an infinity of mystery.
I close my eyes and try to forget the distance and time of the world; to abolish it in my mind and to set my longing free. I want to be I don’t know what and go I don’t know where; literally. I want to forget and remember that I am. I want to know nothing; nothing at all. I want to FEEL and know that to feel is mystery, blessing and miracle all in one. That I can and that I do; that my feelings are possible at all.
I open my eyes and deeply fathom that which lies between my heart and the stars. A conviction of which my mind will never know anything and which I will try to explain to it for the remainder of my days.
