Ephemeral Musings

Trees glowing in autumn splendor, the delicate umbers radiant in the foggy dawn are exquisitely beautiful. Occasional trees or group of leaves seem to be absolutely illuminated with a Graceful Presence. This beauty stirred a memory: I remember lying on my back underneath a tree, looking at the sky and dazzling sunlight through the leaves. A delightful, ephemeral, perhaps mundane, historical moment. But then, gradually, something in the focus of my vision would change, and the leaves and sky and light lost dimension, and all became one, leaves moving up and sky moving in. The leaves were illuminated and a part of the sunlight and sky, and I, absorbed, would forget myself…no longer the viewer. Timeless. Then I would feel the moist grass under my back, and my focus shifted and time again existed and the fleeting moment would be gone. Illuminated leaves coming into existence and passing out again. This was a moment existing in time, in the historical dimension, however it seems that there are so many ephemeral moments in our lives, such as this one, in which we touch or glimpse the vertical axis. It is evocative to conjure them up again.

Another moment that just flashed before me was a memory of looking at my newborn’s face, doing that mimicking sort of dance that parents and their newborn babies do… and then looking deeper, I forgot who I was looking at and began to sense that I was looking at myself because something in my baby’s face, her eyes, seems so familiar it was as though it was me, or someone I have always known… Ephemeral, fleeting, magical moment, yet one that seems to not be of time but rather be of the ultimate dimension. These moments do not happen because of any desire, they are not born of intention. These seem to be flashes on the vertical axis; of a timeless Presence.