Tonight I caught a brief glimpse of something vast and expansive. It began with an actual, visual glimpse (in this case it was a lone star shining briefly through the clouds). But what unfolded before me (and, perhaps, within me) was far more than anything visual could contain. 

I am, like all the rest of you who share the experience of being alive on this planet, human, which means, among other things, that we live finite lives constrained in terms of both time and space. The span of moments we are privileged to spend here is brief, even for the most long-lived of us. And the distances we can travel, along with the varied landscapes we can behold, are equally limited. It is easy to think that our lives, indeed our very existence, is small and insignificant and of no account whatsoever. But tonight I caught a glimpse (and not for the first time) of a larger Truth. The Universe is vast beyond all comprehension, and we are connected to all of it. That star I was pondering this evening is farther away than I will ever be able to grasp. So far away, in fact, that the light I was seeing originated in some remarkably distant past. The other day I saw a photograph taken by a man named Jon Kirkbride who was standing somewhere in the Yosemite valley, with the Andromeda galaxy shining in the sky. That’s a whole other galaxy! And yet there it is shining in our sky. I will never be able to touch that star or that galaxy. And yet, in a profound way, I already have. Photons from those distance places have reached my eyes. I don’t understand how. I cannot even begin to fathom what it means to even say such a thing. I am, as I previously mentioned, human, so my words and my thought processes and my ability to even consider such things are extremely limited. And yet, somehow, I occasionally have glimpses of that which is beyond me, and yet, at one and the same time also fully and completely connected to me. Finite and limited, while also being infinite and limitless. I only caught a glimpse of this Truth, this Reality, and already my sense of it is beginning to fade, because I don’t have the capacity to hang on to such vastness. But I know how it feels. In the moment when the window briefly opened I was filled with a deep and profound sense of peace, and also a sense of vastness in which I was both lost and found. 

For a long time in my life, for reasons that I have not ever been able to fully understand, I did not believe that I mattered, that my life was worth much of anything at all. But I know now that such thinking is utterly and completely misguided and false. We are, each of us, the Universe walking around in finite human form. And isn’t that just a remarkable thing to consider! Tonight I’m feeling connected to an incomprehensibly large reality. And I am delighted to proclaim that you are a part of that connection as well. Let’s be immensely big together!