Sarah Price "I am the Sky"

On page 54 of “Landscapes of the Sacred,” Lane quotes French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea about the “importance of our bodies in the interactive exchange by which perception [of a sacred place] occurs.” Lane says that, “we relate to the world in far more than purely cognitive ways. Our bodies are not simply a cage or repository of the mind. They move through an environment as “part” of it, actively engaged in perceiving and being perceived.
Merlau-Ponty declared: “As I contemplate the blue of the sky I am not set over against as an acosmic subject; I do not possess it in thought, or spread out towards it some idea of blue such as might reveal the secret of it, I abandon myself to it and plunge into this mystery, it ‘thinks itself within me,’ I am the sky itsef as it is drawn together and unified, and as it begins to exist for itself; my consciousness is saturated with this limitless blue…” Phenomenologically speaking, the world beyond us is also deeply before us. We speak “for,” “to,” and “with” it in a way that demands the total investment of ourselves.”
I, myself, had such an experience. One day, I came out of class, and found the weather was unseasonably warm. I knew that I had a lot of work to do, but instead, I threw my backpack in the grass and plopped down next to it. I stared up at the sky. The “limitless blue” was all around me. It was so close that I could reach out and touch it with my fingers, and yet it was so infinite that a million arms could not embrace it. I was in it and it was in me. It was a calm and peaceful moment in my life where I felt like the sky was holding me and I was safe.