Mama, where am I?

I said you are in my arms against my heartbeat, Small One. But that isn't enough for you; of course it's not, you are made from me. You want to know where you are, in that other scheme of things, where Home is bigger than my arms, and Here is more than my heartbeat. 

If you are asking questions like that, then some part of you is me, and some part of you will always be right here. That is your heart answer. But you have a mind, too. And someday you will find comprehension for what you already have learned to  wonder without understanding it: if space is infinite, then - in the grander scheme of relativity - how is where you are, in any way, really, truly, a location? 

Baby, some people - legitimately grounded or not - (when you're old enough to laugh, you'll see it's a pun, and then you'll ignore it, because by then you'll be sure that all of Mom's jokes are lame) believe an epic centrifugal force draws all-that-is-out-there to this Here-Place called Earth. I am not some people. All I know about magnets is that they stick to each other. But if I had to formulate a theory to explain locations... situations... from nothing but what I know... then I would tell you this:

Something bigger than all these things, outside all these things, containing all these things, permeates all these things

constantly. 

And that constantly is a paradox, which means it is made of things that aren't supposed to fit together, but do. (Like our personalities, Crumb-Face.)

It's made up of meetings as small as it is big, and as sudden as they are foreseen, and as shocking as they are soothing. (Like the lightning in the sky tonight. Or when you put your finger in the outlet. Except that wasn't soothing. Don't do that again.)

Encounters with... galaxies... continents... countries... cornfields... kosai.

A galaxy is the rendez-vous of a family of stars. 

A continent is the sum of sea-shell strewn sands where the sea gets tired of playing. 

A country is an expanded Connect-the-Dots made and fought over by small people pretending to be big. 

A cornfield is hope wrapped up in a hard shell, thrown on broken ground, stretching green hands to the sun. 

And kosai is the fried goodness that warms your hands and stains your shirt - and mine, now, too.

Later the mice will come, sniffing, nibbling

drawn by the crumbs you drop in the earth by the cornfield. 

Just like you came with your handful of kosai and your eyes wide in the darkness,

looking for me. 

Just like I came with my heartful of living and my soul          wide in this nighttime,

looking for the Reaching behind it all.  

Magnets are mice, and kosai. And you and me. And us and the storm coming. We come together because we are pulled by something bigger

and location is when we connect. 

So where are you? You will always be 

where the reaching heartbeat of you meets the reaching heartbeat of God. You will know where you are when you come to know both those heartbeats, and find them one. 

Someday when you're bigger you'll think this isn't a mind answer. And someday when you realize you're still small, you'll understand that part of the human paradox is that our minds and hearts aren't nearly as far apart as we like to think they are. But right now my arms are big enough to surround your world, and my words are bigger than my arms and longer than your awakeness. You won't hear me when I say that I didn't tell you the whole answer because I don't know it either. Or at least, I didn't when I came here tonight asking your question.

But maybe I do now. 

Image by Mark Edwards via Hard Rain Picture Library, linked from http://www.hardrainproject.com/hrpl?n=5743