Tag Archive for: Light

STUMBLING ONTO JOY

If you’ve lived long enough, or perhaps if you’ve just REALLY lived, you’ve been the giver of unconditional love a time or two.  If you’ve been fortunate enough to be a parent, it goes with the territory.  You  give without ever asking or even thinking about asking for anything in return.  The ones you truly love make mistakes (sometimes a lot of them) and you forgive them.

You love them as they are, at their very best and at their most challenging.  And if it is the perfect kind of unconditional love, it means letting the other be most perfectly themselves.  It is like water for the soul, helping it to blossom into what it is called to be.

 When we love like this, we are not hoping that they fit an image,  perhaps really just a mirror image of ourselves.  Actually, when you come right down to the heart of the matter, the self has nothing to do with unconditional love.  The self that cares so much about checks and balances, that wants to know “what have you done for me lately” always get stuck in this building we call the body.

When there is no clutching towards the self, no seeking to find something particular to and for us; we love joyfully and without hesitation. 

If you experience this kind of giving, you have been given a glimpse of heaven. In the Christian Bible, Jesus shares the Parable of the Hidden Treasure to explain how priceless this experience of real love is (Matthew 13:44), “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy sold all he had and bought that field.”  This is not to say that accepting another fully is without pain or is easy, but rather it is priceless. It is a wellspring.

It seems most often in my life (and perhaps in yours), that I have stumbled upon these moments, have been gifted with the people I have loved unconditionally, and so it makes the joy even more precious as I did nothing to make them come about.  They have come into my life, not as a payment earned, but as proof of grace.

The Sufi poet, Hafiz writes,   

 “Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me’. Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky.”   

When you love freely, there is no end to how the spirit soars, no limit to how Love can expand.  

I was given this gift by father and it wasn’t his to keep, but to enjoy.  I give this gift to my children and it isn’t mine to keep, but to enjoy.   I know it is now theirs to take and enjoy.

DAWN AND RESURRECTION ARE SYNONYMOUS

This morning, I woke up before my dog, to attend one of our local church’s annual Sunrise Easter service. I am not a member of this church, but have lived in this little hamlet of 4500 souls for 18 years. It’s an everyone knows everyone kind of place.  And yet, for one reason or another, I’d never attended before.  It’s held at the shore of our Town Pond, which is lovely and secluded and has an ancient history (if one could call New England history ancient.) As I walked the path to the pond, there were luminarias lighting the way (white paper bags weighted with sand and little tea candles in them).  The hot pink and grey-blue sunrise rose up over the water, blessing our sleepy-eyed band of celebrants.  And while I understand that many past services had a frost and a chill in the air, today’s early moments began balmy.  The crackling bonfire was more symbolic perhaps than necessary.  Although, I don’t think we can ever get enough of the symbols, the concepts, or the people that bring light to the world.   The mood was meditatively quiet. The prayers were simple, direct, and ready for immediate application.   

I saw some of my dear friends around that fire, those who know the kind of challenging year I’ve had.  I felt their good will towards me through their eyes, their smiles, and hugs.  I hope they sensed the same from me. Resurrection is the happy part, but its significance is diminished if we don’t remember what comes before it.   For most of the world’s Christians, today is Resurrection day. It means that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and returned to life everlasting… AFTER suffering a torturous, laborious, and unjust death.  Even outside of Christianity, many faiths believe in a future state after death, where there will be a resurrection, a rising again, to new life in some shape or form.  Yet resurrection’s power, its gift of joy which passeth all understanding (no matter your faith) comes from the awe, the incredulity of being brought back from our darkest places, when we are crippled or broken or blind and death seems certain.  

Ena Zizi was there. (From an excerpt from Paul Jeffrey’s article, “Out of the Rubble”, March 23rd,  The Christian Century:

After having been buried for a week in the rubble of Haiti’s January 12th earthquake, Ena Zizi was rescued by the Mexican team called the  Gophers (rescue workers, some of them survivors themselves of a horrific earthquake in Mexico city in 1985).  As they pulled her dirty and injured body out on a broken piece of plywood salvaged from the rubble and carefully passed her down over three stories of debris to the ground, the 70-year-old woman was singing.  Her singing was inarticulate, as she hadn’t had any water to drink for seven days.  Yet her joy was infectious.  The members of the Mexican rescue team who were carrying her began crying. 

Zizi, who was severely dehydrated and had suffered a broken leg and dislocated hip, yelled for help for hours, then for two days, conversed with a priest, and when he grew silent, she “talked only to God.”   Her singing was gratitude, the indominability of the human spirit, and a way for her rescuers to find her.  To the South African and Mexican rescue teams surrounding her, she was very real proof of resurrection.

Resurrection is never just personal.  It is always in relationship.  Yesterday, while I was out on my daily run, I ran into a neighbor out for a walk with her two school age children.  Her 11-year-old daughter has been struggling with leukemia since May.  I noticed her hair was growing back in a full, spiky, long crew cut fashion.  And she had dyed it in  colors of the rainbow.  I wept later to witness her resurrection, the “resumption of vigor” (one definition).  And her courage to wait on it, expectantly, faithfully.       

Song of the Day: Amazing Grace by John Newton (1725-1807) (Ex-slave trader)

Stanza from the Song of the Day: “Through many dangers, toils, and snares/I have already come/’Twas Grace that brought me safe thus far/and Grace will lead me home.”

Quote of the Day: “Dawn and resurrection are synonymous.  The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.” -Victor Hugo