My religion is the open empty field


(1)

I passed through the window looking for the outside and landed back here in my mind.

When did I find this scene? I have never been here before but with closed eyes I smell the trees and summer afternoon. I can easily recall sepia-toned memories of the rusted red swing set surrounded by a chain link fence in the yard across the street from the old school that is now a church.

Do we ever leave behind childhood? No matter the desire and effort to push away from, to bury, to set fire to the house built for protection, a place to hide… it is still there in dreams and in passing and in the air you breathe.

Concealed beneath watery dreams, steam rising from the black tar, and autumn’s gift to the earth, I found what the wind guided me to… a portrait sparingly resembling myself.

I did not realize until then what I was even looking for. I did not know I was lost and scattered to the earth. I had never seen my own face.

In this moment of clarity, I let go of the self in the present and relinquished to the past, giving up the concept of moving through forward time into unexplored seconds. When I realized I have been here before with closed eyes, the space infused with scents of home.

(2)

Myths and legends of god’s thrones in the mountain passes, of spirits in the valleys and of the gateway hidden in the cloud shrouded peaks.

The snow mist and snow drifts conceal not only the mountain but ourselves as we lose and strip away false hoods and misconceptions of self.

I left this body, the only one I knew, and drifted into the open spaces.

Turning I saw what I was or I am and felt no regret as I drifted through the open fields into the valley and through the mountain pass.

(3)

Each visit to the open fields casts away burdens and questions. Each visit dips the body in water and bathes the mind in light. My religion has become the open field that opens the mind to limitless knowledge of the infinite universe with hints of my path and genesis.

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