The Universe Might Be Too Thin

I can’t write because I can’t feel. I’ve sat down multiple times in the past several months to put words together in sentences that express something deeper than the words themselves. To try to parse together some meaning from this year. But the words look more like strings of letters, even a compilation of pixels, more than anything resembling meaning.

I recently read that some scientists are concerned that the universe might be too thin. Apparently cosmologists are worried about more black holes and dark energy and the like. It sounds like something that should worry me but I found this fact strangely comforting. Even the universe is currently spread beyond its limit and may not be able to contain everything it should.

My work week is spent encouraging artists to continue to create in the midst of this year of confusion and chaos and death and misinformation and hatred. I don’t know how they do it. Each time they show me something new they are working on, I am in awe. I know very few things for certain after this year but I know we need artists more than ever. And we need to find new ways of supporting them so that they are still creating art after all this is over.

The best way I have found of describing my state of being right now is: worn out. I think of a favorite T-shirt that has been worn over and over again – on sunny days, chilly days, wet and rainy days – until you can see through the threads to the other side. Thin and threadbare don’t sound like words to describe a soul but those are the ones that feel the closest to something like accurate.

I don’t think this is depression because I keep moving and am still motivated to try to have real connections with people in the limited way that is possible this year. I feel certain none of this is forever but also that I’m not capable of actually processing all that this year has illuminated, revealed, unearthed while I am living it. I feel like I’m gathering up things from a burning building that I will only be ready to unpack and really look at once the fire has stopped burning – or at least once I’m no longer in the middle of it.

And also (because life is always “and also”) I am getting to know someone who has brought so many unexpected moments of deep joy. In the midst of a year of burning, he has been as refreshing as a swim on a hot day – something we do often. As well as hiking, biking, exploring, looking at stars and trees, and adventuring in the limited radius we are allowed this year. It is new and good and real in the best meanings of those words.

I miss going to church even while I have never been more disgusted with the state of the American church. I miss rituals and religiosity and trying to connect to the Divine and I can’t think about Advent this year without crying. There is a deep ache for the Transcendent and also for Immanuel. It has been the longest Lent of my life and I want Easter so badly. And yet I also cannot currently read anything with the heading “The Christian/Biblical/Godly perspective on…” because most of these perspectives make my stomach turn and my face feel hot.

I don’t know how to wrap-up this rambling because I still don’t know how to form meaning from all of the thoughts and feelings that have passed through me this year. So this is not an end. It is a seylah.