“The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself.
Who can calculate the orbit of one’s own soul?”
– Oscar Wilde
It’s mid-April, and between Zoom meetings, I left the house today only to buy dianthus and creeping phlox that I intend to plant in the next few days. And I know how very privileged I am to be safe at home in the middle of a global pandemic. There are so many who aren’t safe, haven’t been safe maybe ever in their lives, and a world-wide shutdown deepens the danger and distress of those at the margins; margins that are becoming wider and more populated every day.
But I feel a deep need to plant flowers, to smell the promise of wet soil and to hope that these perennials make it. That we make it.
The Oscar Wilde quote above is from a book given to me by a clergy colleague called “The Hand of God.” It’s a gorgeous coffee table book twinning observations on Cosmology with photos taken through the Hubble Telescope. My cherished colleague is at the end of his life during this Pandemic, trapped in his Senior-Living apartment and praying that if it is his time to exit Earth, that the exit be mercifully quick. He tried to remember the book as I described it to him in conversation today, coming up with only
“Oh yeah, stars.”
For me, one of the most compelling photographs in the book is of Planet Earth, “our fragile, island home.” It’s achingly beautiful, reminding me that I share a home with millions of souls that I’ll never meet, each one of those souls containing universes within galaxies within gardens. And maybe for the first time in human history, contained within and between these souls is the possibility that our sustained future has become indelibly intertwined.
Our orbits have interlapped, and right now, we’re very aware of that. I’m hoping that in this time of isolation, that awareness of interdependence at soul and cellular levels grows, and that we find the universal within, among and between us.