There is a Little Bit of Vastness in Each of Us.

There is a little bit of vastness in each of us. Our vastness does not announce itself, but simply exists as a silent witness of something greater than ourselves dwelling in us.

There are different kinds of vastness, from the heavens to the heart. Even a final goodbye kiss can be vast – meaning difficult to measure the full significance of. I remember the final kiss of a wife whose husband of fifty-four years succumbed to a long-term illness. He had just passed, and we sat in the hospital room for a time, talking, praying and waiting for the funeral director.

Came the moment to let her Bill’s body be taken; she slowly reached down and imparted a final kiss on his unresponsive lips. I was unprepared for its poignant power. Her measureless kiss said, in effect: “Thank you for our love and life together;” “You are more precious to me than can be spoken;” “Until we meet again, know how much I love you.”

In a narrow hospital room, in a little town in northern Illinois, a frail elderly woman manifested vastness in a singular kiss of a dead husband, a kiss not to be forgotten. How was it vast? It was as if love itself kissed its eternal beloved, with gratitude, commitment and hope. It reminded me of a haunting poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“And you as well must die, beloved dust, / And all your beauty stand you in no stead;/

This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, / This body of flame and steel, before the gust / Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, / Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead / Than the first leaf that fell, this wonder fled, / Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost. / Nor shall my love avail you in your hour. / In spite of all my love, you will arise / Upon that day and wander down the air / Obscurely as the unattended flower, / It mattering not how beautiful you were, / Or how beloved above all else that dies.”

If love is vast, then we who love share in vastness. Who can measure love? As I wrote:

“We are caught between heaven and earth: We cannot reach the limitless; we cannot set roots in the finite. We are an unexpected present transcending a past while struggling for a future.

“The heavens mirror our tomorrow, too far to reach, yet too near to deny. As a vision of our greater self, it breathes its vastness into us. The earth reminds us of our neediness, and of the Mother which fulfills it. As a body we cannot live without, our earth would have us suckle its fruit.

“We are the first born from the marriage of heaven and earth. We are of both, yet belong to neither. For in our creation a new order emerged: The universe within.

“Heaven and earth are within us, inseparable as feeling from heartbeat. And without its earth, what would our heaven be but a song with no voice to sing it? Eternity with no home to give it meaning? And without an endless heaven, what would our earth be but a prison?

“If we could not soar into the heavens, if only in spirit, what would life be but a room too small for love?”