An Observation on Spirituality

The Constant Siege has a lovely observation about spirituality that I wish I’d written myself:

It’s the ozone smell of the desert after a summer rainstorm, or the damp magnolia fertility in the air of a New Orleans night. It’s old Puerto Rican men playing dominoes on the sidewalk in Brooklyn, spilled out of their apartments, our public space blended with their private, their women dancing to boombox salsa, their children running for ices, far off police sirens singing chorus.

It’s the atoms in my blood and heart and brain. Atoms that have existed since the dawn of time, and will continue until it never ends. Atoms that have been in the heart of stars, and traveled in comets, and lay in the cold grey dust of the moon. Atoms that have fed great sequoias, and the earthworms underneath them. Atoms that have been breathed by kings and paupers, philosophers and madmen. Atoms that I’m carrying right now, on brief loan, my contribution to their life, and theirs to mine. Pure eternal energy, great and small. It’s being old when young, and young when old, knowing I will die soon, but I’ll never really die.