Last evening I stepped out into the bitter cold to witness Saturn and Jupiter come close to each other as if they were going to lovingly embrace, if you can consider “embracing” while separated by millions of miles. I can use the word embracing as in “touching” here only with the realization that in reality I am viewing this moment in our cosmic history from a physical distance of millions of miles. Even those two planets, appearing to be in “conjunction” are separated by five plus million miles. It is our “perspective” that allows us to witness this incredible moment in our history, giving us the necessary separateness that allows us to bring delight, joy, wonder and appreciation to the table. Before our perspective took roots in our early childhood we did not have the “luxury” of distance as we were part and parcel of a “moment” that we were immersed in and not able to cognitively/spiritually understand it. At that moment there was no “object separateness”…. to employ a bit of clinical jargon. It is the Biblical “fall” that gave us this detachment without which there would be no human culture. Spiritual maturity can gradually come to us in our “four-score and ten” when we grasp the wisdom of this Great Round of which we are but a part, a visitation of “Grace.”

The abysmal distance left us with a hunger to “close it up,” to find the lost connection and return to the delightful “Garden of Eden.” We pine for the relief from the burden of life in which we are separate and distinct, where culture seduces us into believing its artifice can give us that “Grand Conjunction” where grace awaits us. Culture, certainly language, can guide us in that direction but only if we see…and feel…that words will never suffice; they are but “pointers” to the Ultimate. The Buddhists so profoundly teach us, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

Here I want to share another Edgar Simmons poem which beautifully and profoundly captures the experience of distance:

THE MAGNETIC FIELD

Distance…which by definition
Indicates a separation from self
Is the healing poultice of metaphor,
Is the night-lighting of poetry.
As we allot to elements their weights
So to metaphor we need assign the
Weight of the ghost of distance.
Stars are stars to us
Because of distance: it is in the
Nothingness which clings us them
That we glory, tremble, and bow.
O what weight and glory lie abalance
In the stretch of vacant fields:
Metaphor: the hymn and hum of separation.