The Other End Of The Sky

The human soul, it seems, is not soluble in that which is greater than itself. Yet isn't that its vocation, its raison d'être ? Is it not what lifts us up to the roof of the stars, to the rays of the infinite night? We have been promised it in every language, this halo infinitely finer than our flesh, the very essence of our being. What secret melody do the books that have been handed to us since the dawn of time sing, the haunting refrains of pure and absolute conduct, which impose themselves beyond all other evidence and whose authors have not signed their names because they sing in the name of Another? Do they have no other treasure for us than to appease our consciences, to confine us too before the altar of a narcissism of ashes? But our conscience has no other journey than our race on earth; it will flee, as it does every night, to vanish with our last dream.

The soul is the young child who watches the old man offer seeds to the fertile soil. "What are you doing, Grandpa? "As you can see, I'm planting seeds to make trees grow. The child hesitated but couldn't hold back his thought. "But Grandpa, at your age? You won't even be around to see them grow". The old man smiled and looked at the child. "These seeds will grow into carob trees, which only produce their best flowers and fruit after a hundred years. Which means that you won't see them grow either." With that, he handed the seeds to the child, who hesitated, smiled back and began to sow.

What other mischief do we still need to understand and accept? At a time when everything in our time is geared towards the immediate, the here and now, when everything is conditioned by pleasure and swift, personal reward, we are hungry for the slightest sign that will shake us out of our implacable insignificance in the eyes of eternity. Who now wants to explain to us that the soul has no greatness unless it works for an event that we will not be there to see, not there to reap its riches? What is beyond is not in space, but in time. What book, what preacher explains it to us? What poem invites us to do so? What philosopher urges us on?

Our soul is alive and vibrant. It is our conscious, deliberate arrow towards a distant tomorrow from which we will be absent. It is the light of our imagination, the daughter of our enchanted vision, our power of creation, an intention that will travel from moon to moon, and who knows, a spark that may find us, back to life, at the other end of the sky.