A Conversation With the Sky

One wild night in Utah...

“The sky gave me its heart because it knew mine was not large enough to care for the earth the way it did.” — Rabia

I had a conversation with the sky once in Utah. It was civil twilight, and the clouds shot high into the heavens like billowy kings of rose and cerulean blue. They said, “Look. We’re hiding something magnificent beneath our royal robes.” Then for a moment they parted their vestments like a curtain, revealing behind them a Great and Terrible Silence. 

I recognized Him immediately, and trembled. It was like standing next to the universe, and marveling that it knew you were there, a hairs breadth away, a spec of dust on the skirts of a mountain, and yet for some reason quite beyond reason it had decided not to crush you. It was like the earth shifting its orbit to allow a pebble to drift safely by. 

It was in that moment I realized how magnificent it is to be alive, to be so tiny and insignificant, and yet to be so loved as if I were the point of everything. 

That Great Silence knew me, and I knew in that moment of mutual seeing that my life was a gift, that however slight my presence in the grand drama of Creation, I was meant to be here. I am being granted this brief time in the sun. I’ve got a story to tell with my life, a song to sing to the Silence, and I must by all means do everything in my power to make it a good one. 

My body is the pen.
My blood, the ink.
Take me in your hand, God.
Use me to write
a story for the Ages. 

Selah…