Infinity in My Lap

"Infinity kind of...drops into one's lap."

That's Stratford Caldecott trying to describe to Ken Myers those moments when we are struck with the infinite nature of the cosmos, and how we are a part of it and are touched by it. How children seem to experience those moments more frequently, and how we as adults can learn to be more open to them.

I was listening to the interview this past Wednesday while driving from Memphis to my home town in Arkansas. This time of year the fields are piercingly green as the early evening light does its magic with their chlorophyll.

At certain moments I felt infinity dropping into my lap, perhaps bumping on the steering wheel as it came. It was early evening. The sun was still high enough to not be right in my eyes, but it was dropping, and it shone on the fields and through the trees at an angle that just made them magical. I wanted so much to stop and take pictures! But I knew if I did, I risked letting the sun get to the point that I would not be able to see, because I was driving almost due west the entire trip, and if that evening sun got any lower, I would be blinded.

So I kept driving, marvelling at the beauty. When I came near the White River and saw the red clover growing thickly all along the sides of the road, it was all I could do to just keep driving.

I was going this way partly to visit family, and also because of a professional seminar on "The Secrets to Using Art as a Healing Process," by Lisa Mitchell.  As soon as I saw the brochure about it, I knew I wanted to go.

So you probably won't be surprised at one of my pieces of art done on the following day. The instructions were simply to draw a square. Then to fill it with color, line, and texture. And then to take something from inside the square and move it outside the square. Here's what showed up on my pice of paper. . . .

The words came to me from the recesses of my mind, from a song my chorus sang in high school. If I can get it to work, you can listen to it here: