The Light Is The Context, Episode 245
The background culture that surrounds us very often makes the unspoken claim that what's most true about existence is cold, hard matter, and that anything else we encounter - meaning or love for example - is just something we humans invented.
But what would happen if we trusted instead that there is an ancient light doing its best to shine forth through us and between us? And what would happen if we could treat the most difficult aspects of our experience, and the most challenging and painful parts of ourselves, as if they were right next to this source of light that could illuminate them? And if we treated ourselves and one another as if the light was the very surrounding in which we move and which wants to move within us?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what opens when we understand the context of our lives and our experience to be an ancient light that's trying to find us and shine through us. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about today.
How the light comes
I cannot tell you how the light comes.
What I know is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves searching out what is hidden,
what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness for the body,
for finding its way toward flesh,
for tracing the edges of form,
for shining forth through the eye,
the hand, the heart.
I cannot tell you how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape you did not foresee.
And so may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.
Jan Richardson
Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash