Empty Spaces

This is one of the selections from my recent release, Words Transcending Themselves.

1

In a single second, the voyager spacecraft travels eleven miles through the darkness.

In one minute it travels the distance between Boston and Richmond, Virginia.

In one hour, it covers the distance around the equator.

In one month, that is a trip to the moon.  And back to the Earth. And back to the moon.  And to the Earth, again.

 

But the hundreds, thousands, millions of miles that it actually covers

These are through an empty dark:

Even The scientists  call that place

cosmic purgatory.

Nothing, and nothing, and more of nothing.

 

In 2025 there will not be enough energy left within 

To power a single instrument on the vessel.  

The blackness outside  will finally have its way with the world within it.

 

If we had aimed it at a star in the first place,

It would have been arriving for a lunch date

Sometime in February.  around the year 72, thousand three hundred.  eighteen.

 

2.

All the things I know and think I know.

All my feelings.  Memories. Words.

Begin, of course, 

In fifteen centimers located beneath my eyes, 

Between my ears

 within my skull

100 billion neurons weighing less than 3 pounds.

 

In the beginning there was an impulse.

Follow it with me

In through a dendrite, 

Away past the nucleus

Down the myalin sheath, 

And out those axons…

 

But between each of the cells…

There is this open space.

The synapse is a gap bridged  by neurotransmitters.

 these countless empty  spaces, these darknesses between the neurons

I declare 

That they be named 

 the tiny  purgatories of the mind.

 

3.

I am thinking about open spaces today.

I declare that as above, so below

As it is outside

So it is within

 

There are these

Billions of voyagers traveling billions of synapses

Each with three radioisotope thermoelectric generators

Propelling her among an oort cloud made of  serotonin, glutamate, norepinephrine and endorphin.

 

And I declare that the emptiness,

The pause, the waiting, and the anticipation…

These are the things which might just redeem us.

 

I am thinking about open spaces today.

And I declare that our one great hope

Is in nothing, and nothing, and nothing at all.

 

Published by

Jeff

The stories that speak to our soul begin at a home where things are good. Cinderella is happy with her father. The three little pigs have grown up and are ready to move on. Bilbo Baggins knows his shire. Adam and Eve walk with God in the garden. My story isn’t much different. There was a time and a place where it was so good. There was a community for me. And there was joy. We were filled with a sincere desire to do what God wanted us to do. We possessed explanations and understandings that went a certain distance. We offered security and tradition and laughter. For a lot of years, that was enough. I have this sense that it was also necessary. I have this surety, now, that it certainly wasn’t everything. There were some things that became increasingly problematic as time went by. There was a desire to package things up so very neatly. Sunday morning services were efficient and strategic. Responses to differences of opinion were premeditated. Formula began to feel more important than being real. A real desire for everybody to be one of us, but also a real sense that there is an us, and there is a them. They carried a regret that it has to be this way, but deeper than this regret was a surety that this is how it is. I began to recognize that there was a cost of admission to that group. There were people who sat at the door, collecting it. Those people wished they didn’t have to. But I guess they felt like they did have to. They let some people in, and they left others out. There was a provisional membership. My friends did possess a desire to accommodate people that are different… But it would be best for everyone concerned if they were only a little bit different. I did make many steps forward in this place. Before I went there, there were lies that I believed. Some of the things that I learned there, I still hold on to. But that place is not my home anymore. Those people are not my community anymore. There were times it was hard. I am engaged in a different community now. And I am working hard at finding a place in many different places now, embracing many different kind of families. I don’t always get it right. I am trying and I am learning and I am moving foreward. I have this sense that I am not alone in these experiences. I believe that we are tribe and we are growing. We are pilgrims, looking for a new holy land. Perhaps we won’t settle on the same spot of land. But if you’ve read this far, I am thinking that we are probably headed in the same general direction. I have begun this blog to talk about where my journey is taking me. In every space, we find people who help us along. And maybe we can get to know each other, here. We embrace ideas that provide a structure for the things we believe, and perhaps we can share these too. Maybe we can form a group, a tribe, a community, if we can figure out a way to work through the shadow of these kinds of groups, if we can bigger than the us-and-them ideas that have caused so much trouble in the past. As important as they are, I think the very nature of online interactions will lend itself to something equally powerful. I am stumbling onto these practices that my grandfathers and great grandfathers in the faith engaged in. I am learning about these attitudes and intuitions are so different than the kinds of things we call doctrine today. I don’t know about you, but I am running out of patience, and even interest, in conversations about doctrine. I hope that maybe you’ll share a little something about where your journey is taking you, and maybe our common joys and challenges might help each other along, and we might lift each other up. Thanks for doing this journey with me.

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