Sunshine

The sun shines all over this planet leaving energy for plants to grow and light to illuminate our lives. For an emergence of sunshine is a creative force, cast on the snow and reflected in a glistening light and as rays like fingers reach through the clouds to the terrain of the Earth. It finds its opening in the crags and fissures along the surface of life as a guiding beacon into understanding warmth.

Our eyes open to the first light and close when our body calls upon us for a time of rest and renewal. As the sunshine bursts across the scenes of our lives there is the space to discover what is here in our lives, what is deepened and expanded in every moment. In recent days, I have felt the sunshine of new opportunities in the lives of friends who have danced into the dawn. I feel the gaiety of all we gather in the stories of our days. The stories that begin to glow with the happiness that surprises us as sunshine glows from the places that were once dark.

This is the sharing of sunshine. A dance with a dear friend, a smile with a new one, an understanding nod in an empathetic ear. As we illuminate life with the truth of who we are, we can bear the anxieties and fears that carry our hearts into realms of deepest need. As we hear how we're not alone, as we gather ourselves to trust life at its core, we can begin to soar together.

           

Cosmic Sunshine

Sunshine opens my eyes as view a sunrise. The daytime leaves me with a strikingly different view of the galaxy than the night where the stars and moon color the distances beyond comprehension. Stopped in my tracks by the fast movement in life, I don't have to stop it to enjoy it. I can ride with it, surfing time, as visions of color permeate my consciousness. There it is, the larger picture that is so vast that I am humbled by the changing scenes that flash by with the flicker of a wing and a leap of a trio of deer.

Can I open my senses in the same way that I open my eyes? To open the reality that for a second is before my eyes I need not capture it, but be with it, as it is here. In memory of all the that is now the past that allowed this one to be born, I live.

Along The Journey There Are Glimpses of The Destination

In the soft glow of evening just before dusk life transitions out of the familiar that we have known for the changing hours of today into the vault of darkness that seems to hold more of the unknown. Fear for the future can sometimes suspend my eager anticipatory glances to tomorrow while keeping me expecting the same things I've already known and experienced. The sun has already begun to make its appearance somewhere in the East as I write this in the West. Tomorrow brings so much uncertainty because it has yet to be fully formed.

What about the answers to the questions that make up life's yearnings? What about the destination and end of the journey? Is that what I'm finding in each step I take? There is depth in not knowing. Do I choose to fear or do I choose to accept that I don't know?

In the sunset the day and the night meet for their final time for the day that is about to end. As the darkness arrives, the journey continues. There we find together with the light that the fullness around life is to be discovered as one brings meaning to the other.

Hope When It Is Dark

"Why does it take catastrophe to start a revolution?"  - Jonathan Larson

As I write this post winds and rain chase the landscape into a tumultuous flurry of hurricane and storm along the eastern coast of the United States. The potential and expected damage created is a source of uneasiness and uncertainty that strike at different moments in our lives. There can be wonder and curiosity in the midst of great suffering and loss. Devastating emotions or events can remind us about what we hold dear to our hearts, or challenge us to think about what is most important. They can shred our stability and hope into worry and fear, panic and anxiety that make us wonder how we'll ever get through.

How can this suffering be beautiful? Tears fall across our faces and our hearts continue beating with emotion that is fully raw and fully alive. How can this be beautiful if we are left alone? Where is the goodness in life when we are shackled with grief and the seeming never ending presence of calamity? Even as the storm comes and with it, expectation of and then the physical reality of damage we can find hope from the disaster. Some storms come with less warning and then change the course of the lives affected. Still how can any of this create hope, instill love, become strength, or be something positive?

We often light candles after the power goes out and it gets dark. The shining beams come through places of destruction and despair to offer hope and a way through the darkness. The candlelight we illuminate inside provides more than a symbol of promise; it creates a way to see what storms have done, and what can be done together when we share our own lights, our own stories of reality. The light we have may sometimes flicker, but if we trust it with those close to us we will not be alone. We will begin to trust again and stand together as we prepare what has been lost to grow new beginnings and new memories as we all are strengthened by togetherness.

Painful realities are hard to bear especially as suffering seems to grow and affect multitudes where communities fall apart and homes are ravaged. We often question whether or not we should stand strong and work to overcome when afflictions may appear to come more and more often. The candle we lit may go out, we may lose our voice, our heart may become overwhelmed and life may change with tragedy and wrongdoing.

Disaster may strike, but if we light the hope and the way or find someone that has already done so, we can stand together in friendship as our candles can warm the lives of those around us, as our candles light our hearts so we may feel ourselves giving and receiving in the unity that comes out of brokenness. It is then we can remember the continued strength that is found when we trust ourselves enough to rebuild and grow stronger from the scars and the pain that we faced in understanding that pain will always affect humanity. This is how the night ends while hope and love become the new light of dawn. With a song that comes from one heart that reaches our souls and becomes a chorus of light and hope from the soul as we empower one another in times of human need.