Distance

I was half the naked distance between hell and heaven's ceiling and he almost pulled me under... Indigo Girls, "Prince of Darkness"
It seems rather remarkable that in the span of my lifetime, time and distance have come to mean everything and nothing.
What I mean by this is that there was a time in which both of these things seemed to be impossible. Impossible to comprehend and impossible to conquer. And now, it would seem that both are immensely overrated.
When I think about time today, I think about illusion. Earthbound time is something that does seem to demand our attention and devotion. Though I am not sure that it deserves it. Ultimately, it seems that the only power that anything really has is the power that we give to it. In this regard, our slavery to the clock is like staying in a prison that has no walls. A lot of my life feels like that these days. Still working on taking those first few steps out of the cage. Oh, and it appears to be a bird cage. Who knew?
Distance... another illusion. Or maybe just a misunderstood mystery. How far is it to the Sun? How far is it anywhere, really? I've been trying to get to California for six months. I think it might be closer to the Sun. O.K., forget the metaphysics. Just try to wrap your head around the science (or pseudo-science). We have all heard that analogy of the football field and the tennis ball or golf ball or whatever. No? They say that, proportionately, an atom is, for all meaningful purposes, really just empty space. According to the analogy, the neutron can be likened to a tennis ball in the middle of a football field and the electron/s that orbit/s around it are equivalent to a running track encircling that football field. In other words, it's just this energy field that appears to be solid but really it is just empty space--though, importantly, it is energized empty space.
It is possible to hear these kinds of things that keep them safely categorized in something called, "Physics" or "Quantum Mechanics," and never consider what this might mean in terms of spirit and spirituality. But why would we want to do that? Why would we not wonder how all this relates to us and our day to day lives? BTW, I do not have the answer to that question, but I do believe that it is a worthwhile question.
And I believe that by asking it, we might find ourselves surprised. It may well be that in the pursuit of an answer to time and distance, we might innocently find some other answers to some other questions that have troubled us all our lives. One of my favorite examples here is the question, "where did it go?" Where did that moment go? Where did that special someone go? Where did that opportunity go? Is it really gone, or is it just hiding out of our present vision?
My place is of the sun and this place is of the dark,
and I do not feel the romance I, I do not catch the spark...
Indigo Girls, "Prince of Darkness."