Tears of light

 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. (John 1:9)

I’m told the sun converts four million tons of its substance into light every second of every day, giving life to this blue and green marble that is our home. But today, Old George Way receives little from the sun’s constant generosity.

Ashen rays filter through the leaden gloom of winter clouds, heavy with rain, hanging low on the bare oaks at the end of the street out my west window.

Dreary as Old George feels this morning, places too many to number languish and despair, bereft of the faintest glimmer of any light capable of lifting human hearts to believe that the life of joy and beauty for which they hunger can ever be theirs.

Darkness covers the earth and thick darkness the peoples; so wrote the prophet Isaiah, 2500 years ago, give or take. I’d have thought he’d just watched the evening news, sitting beside me on the couch.

Maybe that is why tears warm my eyes as these words cross my lips: ‘The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.’

I long for this light … and die when I feel its absence.

I want to feel the light of an eternal loving presence when the light of life grows dim and when the news is darker than gray December mornings.

I need to know there is a light that never dies, never fades, a light that was already present when this improbable universe exploded into existence in an unimaginable burst of splendor—so that the improbable reality of my own existence might be possible. I want to feel the miracle of this light (even more improbably) alive in my own confused and conflicted heart, making me glad to be alive, loving my loves and knowing theirs.

I need to see and feel this light so I can believe that the light who is Love is always shining, even when my heart is dim and my eyes do not see.

Knowing: Its goodness glimmers in great and common moments, in all that is good and just, beautiful and lovely, in all that is love and that delights the heart with gratitude for the joy of being alive and able to feel creation’s wonder touching the gentle senses of your flesh.

The One who is the true light, who enlightens everyone and everything, this Jesus, the Light made flesh, reveals the beauty of the divine face. Born amid the poverty of a dark time and place, we seek and look for his light in every time and place, knowing there is no darkness that he will not invade and bathe with the loving light of his presence.

Seeing his face, the light he is awakens the warmth of his beauty in the depth of our souls, and we discover exactly who we are and for what we are born.

And this, I suppose, is the meaning of my morning tears. The light I seek has found me … once more.

It never grows old.

David L. Miller

 

Journey in search of a soul

[John the Baptist] proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’ (Mark 1:7-8)

Tradition sometimes pictures John, the Baptist, as an angry, brazen fellow bellowing out in the desert wastes about sin and righteousness and the need to change … or run, because someone was coming who would burn the chaff in the fires of divine wrath.

There must have been a great hunger for personal reformation and a society more just and decent than their daily scramble to get by; otherwise, it is hard to imagine why John attracted any following at all, let alone the crowds that braved the desert heat and rugged journey to go see what all the commotion was about.

He was a curiosity, with his itchy camel hair tunic, gobbling locusts for nutrition and robbing bees of their honey to choke it all down. Perhaps, he reminded people of wild-eyed prophets of old, afire with a word of God burning in their bones they had to speak lest they risk losing their souls.

And it was likely the concern for their own souls that drew more than a few.

There’s something about our souls. They are ours, and yet not, a gift, an expression, even, yes, an incarnation of the Great Soul who is Love. We can lose track of our souls amid myriad voices shouting from one media or another, telling us what we should say, do, wear, watch, buy and care about, lest we miss the moment.

But that core, the apex of the soul, as medieval mystics called it, belongs only to God, for it is the life of God within our lives, hungry for home, crying to connect, for union with the Love who gives life to all that lives.

We can lose track of our souls and often do. They can get beaten down, shouted out and forgotten, but they do not die. The life of the soul is always there, reminding and even cajoling the heart, irritating our ease with the intuitive awareness that we are more … and are made for more … and will never feel at home in this world until our hearts are one, at rest in the Love for whom the soul within us longs.

I have no idea what I would have heard had I taken my journalist’s notebook and interviewed the pilgrims going out to John, trying to learn what on earth stirred them from comfortable homes to listen to a ragged voice telling them to repent of their misdirected lives.

I suspect most of them would have fumbled about unable to tell me. The real motivations that move the deepest things in us are necessarily deeper than our stumbling tongues can tell. Always were, always will be.

But at root, the reason is surely love, for love is the substance of the soul we lose and one hopes find again in this life. They went into the wild country hoping to find their souls to feel truly alive again, knowing the Great Soul who wouldn’t leave them satisfied with the lives they had.

They were intended for something more, something wild and free, wonderful and joyous, and the voice of soul within them, the Love who does not die, was still, blessedly audible in their restlessness. We should all be so blessed.

I understand these pilgrims. We all can. That restlessness for more, for the More that satisfies the heart, so common and real, is the breath of God’s being within our own.

I understand something about John, too. ‘I am not worthy to untie his sandals,’ he said, speaking of Jesus. But I suspect he would have been glad to do it, honored actually, to which, I say, ‘You take the left foot, John. I got the right.’

It seems a good place to find one’s soul.

David L. Miller