After the Night​

Dawn was obscured this morning by thick clouds.  The world lightened, but still the day is so short.  The cold is coming, the after effect of the dark.  When the light comes, even in increments, even in a dull gray instead of a full golden burst it changes everything.

I often meditate in the spring on the bulbs in the ground.  They are nestled in the cold and dark.  Every year the new season comes and coaxes them out of the ground.  What must it feel like to be immersed in the darkness and find yourself changing…your body changing from starch to sugar, the ground around you softening and somewhere beyond you, far beyond you is an irresistible force that draws you out into a new form of yourself.  Does it take courage for the flower to blindly reach out or is it a kind of delightful self giving?  I often ponder in this season of returning light, the things that draw me out of myself.  What are the ways I am stretching toward that presence?  Why does the move toward that simultaneously feel terrifying and inherently right?  The spiritual journey always moves us through this reflection.  What is life?  Where do I feel it’s presence?  How do I say yes and no to it’s invitation?  And once we have journeyed into that knowing, it moves beyond us and leaves us with the questions again.  When we set out to grow into more love and life, we are seeking to be defeated by greater and greater things.  We are seeking the next more complicated level of experience, surrender and being.

Today we celebrate and welcome back the light even as we add another layer of winter clothing to sustain us till spring.  Today we are being imperceptibly drawn into something more that we likely won’t even see in ourselves for quite some time.  Our task as always is to be compassionate and gentle with ourselves when we say no.  To say yes where we can.  To let life and spirit move in, through and beyond us for the increase of all.

The light returns.  The Light is in you.  The Light is you.  Yes!