That Shining Light In The Dark

The sun streams through the window pane, this the first day of November. It leaves its beauty mark on the smudges  behind the stove top, the dusty glass and counter tops. The neighbor's Japanese maple is half-dressed now, the ground below dusted with a symphony of color. The tree does its best fashion show right when glints of autumn light splay across the crown of passionate shades of yellow and orange. Two gifts that never cease to give me pause.

The light that shows our dirt, the real gritty stuff, shining all over it, a laser beam into the deep hiding places and we cover our eyes, blinded we are by all that beautiful. And when you catch a breath you begin to hold out the shaky palm, the clean up begins. The dark places begin to take shape into something more recognizable and they have a bit more sparkle, more hope, more joy. And as sunglasses go back in the glove box for a season and the breaths come a bit steadier, the questions begin. What if all this light wasn't meant for me alone? Am I to share it while holding the breath? What is the real true purpose behind all that deep cleaning anyway? To help, to bend low, to share?

 I copied this message a few years back, a missive to myself to keep the eyes forward, to cling to hope and the struggle is richly good and pain is your favorite teacher. I see this reminder every day and I forget it every day. But He doesn't. When the season shifts, I reach for the sunglasses, settle them just so, blink at the blazing light, wait for the vision to clear. Maybe giving it away is walking on water. Is that Him wooing us through all that fear, hand patiently outstretched like an invitation to a surprise party? One with our name on the front.

Ann Lamott, one of my favorites wrote, "I have to believe if I do this, it will cause change-there will be more to give, and give means there is more light between the links. You never know exactly where the knot is going to release, but usually if you keep working with it, it will."

And then I notice that streak of light coming from the flash on the camera, how it caught my message above, how it runs right through the inky black writing I scribbled back when the pain began its rifling through and turning things upside down. Is that what happens? In the darkness those flashes of light are the developing process? Making us into beautiful? I think of Henri Nouwen who penned, "People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden real presence of God." I take another look at that reminder, the beautiful make-over.

And later on this first day of November, this sun dipped day, I step out of the car with a grocery bag filled with items from the Dollar Tree, small things to bag up for the homeless, I can't help but notice the way the light glints on the Japanese maple. The limbs will soon bare all, but for this moment I rejoice in all that bright beauty. I take my sunglasses out of the car, set them on just so. And I breathe.