Infinity

Whether one believes in heaven, hell, angels, God, gods, or any other metaphysical construct, it is almost impossible to avoid believing intellectually in the idea of infinity and then, if one has camped outside on a starry night, to have also felt the enormousness of infinity.

Both logic and our feelings tell us that there is a world out there that we can never hope to know or to understand. Both space (distance beyond our imagination, going on forever, or smallness tinier than anything we could hope to measure) and time (a past and a future that keeps going and going and going and….) are infinite. Thinking about them or experiencing them bring awe and wonder and reverence.

And a spirit of humility.

The day my mom died, the day my dad died, I thought about infinity. I wondered about the afterlife. I wondered if there was a heaven or a hell. These times bring out the big questions, don't they? They often humble us, as life does now and again.

I know we can experience hell on earth and, as Dante says, lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate. Leave all hope behind, you who enter here. We abandon our dreams when our souls wither away to almost nothing. Sometimes that happens in a day, sometimes the soul atrophies over time. We sit immersed in our own regrets and fears and loneliness. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. The door is always open.

Looking at a grandchild laugh, however, or fall colors emblazoned just across the street, or sniffing the air after a storm, we can also see heaven on earth. If we pause and just observe we will see it surrounding us and saturating us, infinitely. In every iota of what we can see or will never be able to see there is a miracle. The miracle of countless actions which brought that jot to this moment. That door is always open too.

We are nothing and we are everything and when we see and experience that, we can sense the glory of heaven everywhere, inside us and all about, infinitely. The more we think we are the only thing, or the most important thing, well, that separation and loneliness and finiteness can certainly feel like hell.

I wondered if I would see my folks again, except metaphorically, through memory, or simply through grandchildren or lives they had touched. If one believes in infinity then the possibility of seeing once again those who have died is not only possible, but probable, as John Barrow points out, in his fascinating book, The infinite book: A short guide to the boundless, timeless, and endless. If time and space are infinite then, after all, there are infinite possibilities, aren't there?

The stars are part of us and we are part of them. All the past is part of us too, as we are part of all the future.

Infinity is a topic that has piqued scientists and theologians, mathematicians and poets, young girls and boys looking through telescopes, cosmologists, and astrophysicists. It boggles my mind. I can't even try to understand it. But sometimes I experience a bit of it. Sometimes I feel a part of it. Sometimes, just sometimes, there is no "I" at all, no me, just...."be".

To experience it, pause a moment. Stop thinking about it. Let go. Observe. Be.

Shake off that self-importance.

Immerse in the universe.

Humbly be.

Infinity.

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