The range of light

There is a quality of light that seems capable of making everything appealing -- even the peeling paint on this little seaside cottage.

What I don't really know for sure is if this is so appealing to me because light doesn't tend to be this strong where I'm living; it's usually filtered -- especially this time of year -- through the clouds.

But then that same filtering is what makes it so easy for me to shoot pictures I like here, whereas when I go back east my camera can't seem to take in the range of highs and lows.

Maybe it's just that my camera is no fonder of drama than I am; perhaps we both prefer a somewhat narrower range of light to dark.  Certainly it's true that if we cut ourselves off from our darker feelings we also limit our ability to sense the brighter emotions...

All Saints Day

All Souls 

by May Sarton

Did someone say that there would be an end,
An end, Oh, an end, to love and mourning?
Such voices speak when sleep and waking blend,
The cold bleak voices of the early morning
When all the birds are dumb in dark November-
Remember and forget, forget, remember.

After the false night, warm true voices, wake!
Voice of the dead that touches the cold living,
Through the pale sunlight once more gravely speak.
Tell me again, while the last leaves are falling:
"Dear child, what has been once so interwoven
Cannot be raveled, nor the gift ungiven."

Now the dead move through all of us still glowing,
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
Are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited-
Only the strands grow richer with each loss
And memory makes kings and queens of us.

Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flown to some real haven,
We who find shelter in the warmth within,
Listen, and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
As the lost human voices speak through us and blend
Our complex love, our mourning without end.

Be the light

There are two ways of spreading light:

to be the candle

or the mirror that receives it.

--Edith Wharton

Knitting before the face of God

Once you learn to be fully present, says Anthony Bloom in Beginning to Pray, "there is no situation which can prevent you from praying.  What can prevent you from praying is that you allow yourself to be in the storm, or you allow the storm to come inside you instead of raging around you."

Remembering the story of Jesus sleeping in the boat with the disciples while the storm rages, Bloom goes on to say that we are like the disciples: in the face of the storm we wake God up and shake our fists, saying "Why don't you DO SOMETHING?"

But if we have taken the time to learn to be still, to be present, then we can bring that stillness into the storm.  "If you are silent, you can rest in the eye of the cyclone or the hurricane, in the calm there, leaving the storm around you to rage while you stand at the only point of total stability.  But this point of total stability is not a point where nothing happens.  It is the point where all conflicting tensions meet and are counter-balanced by one another."

And if, he adds, you find it troubling to be still, "Go to your room after breakfast, put it right...light the lamp before your icon, and first of all take stock of your room.  Just sit, look round, and try to see where you live... and then take your knitting and for fifteen minutes knit before the face of God.  I forbid you to say one word of prayer.  Just knit, and try to enjoy the peace of your room."

Now THERE's a practice I could do -- although I might be crocheting instead...

A breath of joy

"Can you imagine that only one minute goes by every minute?  That is exactly what happens.  It is strange, but it is true, though from the way we behave one might think that five minutes could rush past in thirty seconds.  

No, every minute counts as much as the next, every hour as much as the next... You may say, 'Shall I have time to do it all?'  I will answer you in a very Russian way: 'If you do not die first, you will have time to do it.  If you die before it is done, you don't need to do it.' "

-- Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

 I don't know about you, but even though life has slowed down a bit it still feels like I am always rushing from one thing to the next.  Except in the mornings.  Then -- because I know I am slow to wake up -- I take my time and don't load up with to-do lists.  Which means that when I'm walking through the standard morning tasks -- like taking the dog out to pee -- I have time to notice.

This morning, in the dark sky above our deck, I saw Orion.  Not such a big deal to you, I'm sure, but to see Orion in November, however briefly, is amazing in my part of the world.  Because this time of the year, the sky is ALWAYS cloudy.

But there it was -- though unphotographable with the little camera I use these days -- the stars of that distinctive belt stark against the night sky, the whole constellation delicately framed in a circle of cloud wisps, their edges lit lightly by the half moon, though the rest of the sky was cloudy.  The blessing was -- I saw it.  Breathed in the clarity and the light, paused on the steps and just thanked the sky for showing me her beauty.

... and then my husband called to say he'd run out of gas on the way to the ferry; could I bring the gas can?  And so the rush begins again -- but there was, at the beginning, that lovely deep breath of wonder...

I know, this image has little to say about any of this -- except, well -- I like looking at it.  The colors feel to me the same way Orion felt: like a breath of joy.

If it's all a gift...

I went out again with my camera yesterday -- fall is particularly beautiful this year -- and caught this lovely little surprise by the side of the road.

We just assume at times like this that something as simple as a yellow leaf falling on a red bush is merely a happy accident.  But Anthony Bloom, in his Beginning to Pray, suggests otherwise:

"If you accept that this day was blessed of God, chosen by God with His own hand, then every person you meet is a gift of God, every circumstance you will meet is a gift of God, whether it is bitter or sweet, whether you like or dislike it.  It is God's own gift to you and if you take it that way, then you can face any situation..."

I'm surely a person of faith, and yet something in me rebels against this idea.  It might, of course, just be the language...  or it might be that I can't handle the challenge of it; haven't yet achieved that level of commitment.  And it is rather painfully reminiscent of the predestination stuff that I absorbed in my childhood.

But it's good to think of things in this way.  If I accept that everything that happens to me today -- good or bad -- is a gift from God, how will I behave differently?

Saying goodbye

"It's another day in the neighborhood," I hear Mr. Rogers singing, another ordinary day in the neighborhood.  The sun rose, the clouds puffed up and reflected in the lagoon, and yet... It's just not an ordinary day at all for some people -- especially not for a couple I know who pulled the plug -- at 11:11 on 11-1-11,  as per their daughter's wishes -- this morning. 

Lauren, or Lala as she is known by friends and family, had just turned 21, and succumbed to her third bout of cancer this week.  It was, by all accounts, a beautifully handled death, but still -- it's got to be hard to bear; hard for her friends and family to deal with the fact that the sun still rises and life goes on for the rest of the world.

I keep hearing that old song -- I think it came out while I was in grade school --

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world.
It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning and I wonder,
Why everything's the same as it was.
I can't understand. No, I can't understand,
How life goes on the way it does.

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world.
It ended when you said goodbye.

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world.
It ended when you said goodbye.

I'm so sorry.  I know all things come to an end at some point.  But some things just end too soon.