16 March 2014

We Are Light Made Solid (Sunday Meditation #36)

Day began for my house with a glow in a dim corner of a early morning kitchen. Cobalt glass lit from within by an opalescent white mist. I was hurrying through the room in haze of mental distractions and hunger pangs, I forget what I was on my way to do. But that blue glow arrested my progress, breath catching, and the ghost of my brother lit a candle in my heart.

Look carefully, look consciously, to find the light. It exists everywhere and nowhere, which sometimes causes it to fade from consciousness. Like air. Breathing is so fundamental to the course of life that distracted minds lose the ability to do it properly. Not unlike growing our souls without light. We forget to see it as did this morning.

The blueness in the corner radiated from a humble salt jar, silver cap on rich cobalt-hued glass. The glow was unearthly but I quickly determined its provenance. My kitchen is adjacent to a dining room by a wall containing an opening. The kitchen itself has no windows directly to the outside but borrows light from the dining room, which has three windows. The windows face south and west.

The light came through the dining room, illuminating the salt jar just in time to pull my out of my anxious head. Light communicates, it speaks in its own way. A brief rush of time as the spirit of my brother, and my family, was there for me in that blue light. The continuum of life in the corner of an ordinary kitchen.

A humble cobalt-colored jar, filled with the only rock, in its pure form, that we eat. These are not the materials of grand revelations, fiery visions, speaking in tongues. They are, like ourselves, of the earth seen. By light, I am privileged to view the earth unseen, and the spirits which inhabit it. Salt and glass, light and shadow, by these materials I am made whole, I am made human.

3 comments:

  1. This brought to mind an experience I had at a friend's home. I was babysitting her then 3 year old son. Suddenly he noticed a rainbow on the wall near us. She has a crystal hanging in the window. He turned to me and said, "Nana Rose, look! a baby rainbow!" I looked as he pointed. Then he said in a soft voice, "Don't move or you will scare it." So we sat watching. "Isn't it pretty! One day it will grow up and be a big rainbow in the sky."
    I found that such a lovely idea!

    ReplyDelete

"Let your laws come undone
Don't suffer your crimes
Let the love in your heart take control..."


-'The Hair Song', by Black Mountain

Tell me what is in your heart...