time
I didn't accomplish much in my Avon business today. The boys were restless and I let them run through the backyard, chasing each other through drying grass with the bean bag chair while I made hopeful calls to customers and checked my Avon email. The fancy new talking pedometer will have to wait until the skies clear tomorrow.
But beneath the gray of the sky and above the rumbling of the small earthquake below my chair in the late afternoon, something strange and wonderful happened. The little Star Trek story I wrote as a love letter to all that's good about our universe made its way around the planet, thanks to Wil Wheaton, the man who played Wesley Crusher. I couldn't believe it. My boys couldn't believe it. I told them that Wesley himself heard they liked Star Trek and one day wanted to ride in the Enterprise and go where no one has gone before.
And then the letters poured in, heartfelt, beautiful, chaotic, free-spirited letters from Wil's readers telling me how Star Trek changed their lives, made them walk past time and anti-time, into a dimension where all beings shared equally in the great discovery of life, where Jeff Buckley played all day, and no one - no one! - ever ever got sick and died. I love these letters, I love these people. I never knew that a blog entry could bring a person this close to the divine in each of us.
And so my day moved in slow motion and surprise, caught me unaware, let me in a tiny bit on cosmic secrets, got me thinking about time, got me picturing me and these letters and my Avon customers and the letter writers and Wil Wheaton and his readers and all the universe, how we're all connected, how we all breath together at those times when we need it.
I picture the universe as the Sears Tower. You can see the framework that supports the structure. It is built of angles and straight lines, all held up with nails and screws and pipe and wire - a tall edifice, strong and static. And yet, within this structure there resides a flurry of chaotic activity, an endless parade of people in and out, thinking and working and visiting and wondering. People buy tickets, they ride the elevators; they sightsee; they talk to their friends. Some people work at the tower. They take lunch breaks; they talk on the phone. This activity it literally endless, it has no boundary, it could truly be infinite in nature. Still, everything has an overall order, no movement seems out of place, and from the security cameras one can see the patterns of motion. It swirls and circles and fills every corner of the building, but it never runs out of space. Yet the structure that holds all this activity does not move, has a great integrity, and one day will outlive its usefullness and collapse.
My boys are still running in the backyard as the sun sinks behind the clouds into the ocean. But in the mystery of this time and life, they not only run and jump like leopards, they are swimming the stars and holding the hands of everyone reading this today, tomorrow, forever.
I'm so glad to be alive.
7:32:09 PM 
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