Reverence

Sometimes if I sit quietly enough, if my heart is peaceful, it feels as though I can hear the drumbeat of life thrumming above and below and just beyond the grasp of my fingertips. And if I look inward, my heart  beats in line with this greater thrumming. But the rhythm of my own heart is just one component, one tiny piece of this enormous, amorphous, and indescribable whole. This is a thing we have forgotten, isn't it? That, at the end of things, we all belong to one another. Sometimes it is difficult to remember that the concept of separateness is, perhaps, the greatest myth of all.

You are there reading this and perhaps you are very, very far from me. And yet, can you not imagine me, sitting beside you close enough that you feel my heat, that you sense the brush of my hand as it rests by my side? Can you remember the beautiful things we made, the laughter we shared or the way our stories bridged our humanity? And has this distance actually changed a thing? Are we not limitlessly connected, your energy and mine, speaking easily across the miles?

And if we did allow that we all matter much more to one another than our scientific, rational minds allow, what would that mean for us? What kind of love, patience, and beauty could we provide one another? What gains could we make if, instead of judgment, we stood in awe of one another's humanity?

The nice thing about reverence is that it does not have to be grandiose. Moments of reverence in my life have often been small actions that threaten to topple me over. And these tiny moments have such  monumental impact because they connect me directly with that drum beat of humanity, my connection to the natural world a thread that ties me to all the things that have lived before and all the things that have yet to come.

There was reverence closing my eyes under the grand piano as an almost-lover played Clair de Lune in a great music hall at the end of a very important season of my life.

I felt it deeply in the back of the car, holding his hand, bleary-eyed from being up all night and in awe of the courage he brought to his long-term battle with cancer.

I felt it lying in the darkness on a mattress with the two of you, "Blackbird" playing on repeat over and over and over.

I have felt it in the strain of my heavy legs, the dog running somewhere just past my gaze, with the first rays of the sun peeking over the horizon.

I have felt it in the hundreds of kisses provided by the childhood of my children, who still worship each molecule of breath I exhale.

I have felt it in the room with a patient when the darkness and the low hum of the machine allows intimacy, in the stories they have had the courage to share and the vulnerability they have expressed; the newly widowed, the parents mourning the premature passing of a child, the new and terrifying diagnoses, the lives well-lived and the innumerable adventures collected from hundreds and hundreds of patients over a decade.

I have felt it every time the five of us return to the same place, laughter about Christmas cookies and strong thumbs and the ridiculous tales of fiction in which we have all participated and laughed about over too much wine and stomach-curdling white russians.

I felt it, always, with Arvo; in the way that he intuitively understood my soul without a word ever passing over the entirety of our relationship.

There is, indeed, reverence and holiness everywhere if we find peace enough to listen to the thrum, thrum, thrum of our collective humanity. We live in a place and a time of infinite miracles. Of beauty and kindness and bounty and connection. And when it is quiet and I close my eyes and extinguish the loudness everywhere, it is not so hard to understand how humans achieved things like the moon landing or the eradication of smallpox or the creation of the 9th Symphony. 

But mostly, I can't help but consider the infinite grace of having lived and shared even a moment's time with you. Count my knowing you as one of the infinite miracles of this life. Because if you are out there and reading these words, then perhaps there is nothing to be afraid of and, more importantly, none of us should ever again feel the empty, desperation of loneliness again. You and me and the infinite ties that connect all of us are nothing short of miraculous.

(can you hear it? the reverberations under your feet, even now? the thrum, thrum, thrum? it's me! it's you! it's us!)