Querencia

    There is one place I can go and feel completely tranquil.  As soon as I cross the threshold, an invisible hand lifts any concerns or burdens I may carry.  When I go there, I can relax and not care about the world, but admire the beauty of a thousand and one twinkling stars, strewn across the midnight sky.

    The ground beneath me becomes nature’s mattress.  The tickling sod beneath me conforms to my body, as if nature had designed to specifically meet my shape.  With my arms lying straight out to my sides, I can feel blades of grass flicking up from the edge, bent from the tension that my arms transferred from my body to theirs and then released into the air.  Occasionally, one grazes past my skin just so lightly that I shiver with the content of my surroundings.  The cool air offers a type of simple serenity that only those who have exerted much can appreciate.

    As I look straight up at the cloudless sky, the perfect contrast between the darkness and each star reminds me of the separation I feel from the rest of the world.  I know that two hundred yards to my left is an incessantly barking dog.  I know that the air one hundred yards to my right carries the sound of a mother yelling at her son.  I do not hear them.  I cannot hear them.  I am as far from them as I am from the stars that so perfectly hold my gaze.

    I do not realize the effect this holy place has on me, not until I am not there.  The very nature of it will not allow it.  When I am there, I do not remember that the sum of my day amounts to this desire.  I do not think about my day.  During the day, I think about this place.  Our whole life we think about heaven after we die.  My whole day, I think about the piece of heaven I will have when I go home and relish in the memory of a thousand and one twinkling stars.