Logos/Sophia 2012.05.03

It is a reflection in a pool. A man and a woman standing side by side, their hands lightly linked. The man is looking down at the reflection. The woman has her eyes closed and is singing without words.

The water does not move, it is undisturbed. Through the image, through the surface into the depths, you can look and see down, down, so far down it seems impossible that water should be so deep and be so clear at the same time. Nothing stirs within. The pool is primal, undisturbed and singular, a unity of form and a unity of being. Only the two stand outside it, looking down into it and casting their images upon it – the reflection of the outside lies on the mirror surface of the water.

The man looks up from contemplating the image of this pair, he and the other, in the still water. He raises his eyes to the landscape and begins to see its features. He raises them further still and sees the blank expanse of sky. He lets go of his companion’s hand and raises his own parallel to the surface of the water; fingers outstretched toward five points on the horizon, the palm faced down at the reflection.

“The water. And the land. And the sky above.” He gave words to what was there.

The woman opens her eyes and looks, taking it in. A still pool. A featureless plain. An unbroken sky. Her own self. And the other.

She has been singing without words, and the sound – he notices now – brought joy to the heart of the man. Now she stops, but the somewhere the essence of that song lingers on.

She speaks:

“I am not sure that it is so. What you call sky would not be sky save that it is set in opposition to the land. What you call land would not be land without the water giving it its boundary. And what you call the water would not be so without our standing here, looking at it, being reflected in it.”

“What would it be then?”

“What it is. Look!” She points down into the pool, and for a while they both return to contemplation. He looks through the clear waters, considering the meaning of the depths. She looks at his face, welcoming what she sees there.

Some time later they draw in a breath as one and the same word flows past both sets of lips.

They nod at each other, smiling.

The man crouches down by the pool. He reaches out and touches one finger to the surface. The reflection remains but grows in waves, out to the edges, back to the disturbance. And deep within the depths differentiation occurs. Floating within the water tiny specks of life beat softly but vitally. Some reach toward the surface, struggling with the barrier.

The woman bends to them and calls to them, another song without words. She reaches both hands into the water and the barrier is broken. There is a gleeful expansion, separation. A vibrant green moss begins to grow on the shores of the pool. Then she cups the water in her hands and laughs, flinging it up into the air. A gentle rain falls on two upturned faces.

Laughing, the man cries “Rain! Water! Rainwater!” He names it and feels the drops on his face. She shrugs and splashes him again, smiling.

Then on the green moss they sink, and she takes him, in her arms and deep inside of her, and in his ear she hums a bit of something without words. He answers, struggling to express what she knows without knowing:

“We are one. Thou art all. All is one.”

In response she speaks the one necessary word, and beneath it he hears a music on the edge of perception, a song of pure voice.

He closes his eyes.