The Arms of Another's Eyes

It was foggy on the hayfield this morning (photo) and chilly in the house. So chilly, in fact, that the furnace came on just as I was getting up. There was the slightest whisp of cloud rising from the field, as though it wanted to brush the tree tops before the sun drove it away. "If I could just get a little closer..."

There are times when we're like that whisp of cloud, trying to reach for something higher, something that lies at the very edge of the daily details of life, beyond which could be anything. Karl Rahner called it yearning for the transcendent, the desire to experience mystery in the mileau of the moment. That ineffable something that brings us closer to what life is all about.

I think of my friend driving along the coast, racing to meet the sunrise and whatever awaits in her first patient of the day. The unknown incarnate in the face of the farmer or teacher or a child. "Comin' down the world turns over," sings John Rzeznik. Face to face we greet a turning world, the earth in microcosm.

We want to know, does it make sense in the end, is there a reason, can we explain it to our children, to ourselves. And so, we rise every morning in hope, anticipating we'll seek if not find, question if not answer, embrace and be embraced, held by the arms of another's eyes.


( Black Balloon by The Goo Goo Dolls)