It started with a clearing in the woods. Empty space. Then we built the clubhouse. Scraps of wood, bent nails, a door that didn’t quite fit. But inside, something new existed—not just air, but belonging. A space that was ours, held together by more than walls.
When we sat inside, we felt something—a warmth, a steadiness, like we were tethered to something real. Maybe it was just the feeling of being together, but it felt like more than that. We didn’t just build the clubhouse; we built the space inside it, the way a temple isn’t just a building but the silence that gathers in its corners.
Then the storm came.
The walls collapsed, the roof vanished, and all that was left was the ground beneath us. Some of us still met there, insisting it was sacred ground. Others said the sacredness had been in the clubhouse itself, and now that it was gone, so was the feeling. We argued, but the truth was—we weren’t sure where the good feeling had come from. Was it the place? Was it us? Was it something in between?
I thought about how, when I left the clubhouse, I could still feel it. I carried something home with me. It was like a small box in my hands, holding the warmth of the place, and when I opened it later, alone in my room, the feeling would still be there. The next week, I’d bring it back, and someone else would take it home, keeping the fire lit.
It was a little like free will, I thought. Like a string holding a kite. The kite flies, twisting in the wind, free to move—but only because of the thin string that connects it to something solid. Maybe our clubhouse had been the string, not the kite. The feeling, the connection—that had been the real thing. And we had taken turns holding it, keeping it aloft.
The body is like that, too. Walls of thought, built up like the clubhouse, forming the ego. A structure that lets us gather, feel safe, feel real. And yet, the real thing isn’t the walls—it’s the space inside. The warmth we take home. The box we pass between us. The invisible thread, stretching between our hands, keeping the kite in the sky.
And maybe, just maybe, the string itself isn’t something we create. Maybe it is always here. Not me. Not mine. Just nature. Hovering in space, but still contained within something unseen.
Spiritual Gravity 