Light savers

We declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:3-4)

The air has been heavy, threatening rain, every morning this week. Lush little branches with many-fingered leaves sprout in the sultry air on the locust limbs arching over the sidewalk. Feathery ferns, tender as baby-flesh, they coat the dark arms with the dewy fresh growth of Eden, creeping up to the fork where a dove repairs her nest after recent storms.

She flies across the street, picking twigs and wood chips from the neighbor’s mulch for her rehab project. Weaving them into her domicile, she flies off for more, repeating the process for as long as I care to watch from my perch on the balcony.

Watching is what I’m here for, whispers a silent voice within, stirring a thought: It’s what we are all here for.

We are here to watch and see and listen, to touch and testify to whatever light, life and beauty we see.

Only so, do we become truly human. Only this satisfies the Love who lives at our core, the Love who is our true self, children, as we all are, of the Love who first smiled on Eden.

Sharing what we have seen and heard breaks the ancient spell of selfishness that separates us from each other and hollows out the joy which God intends for us.

God is light, First John writes, the light in all that is light, which is to say the love in all that is love. The light and love whom God is … appears in every life, touches every heart, seeking to wake every sleeping soul to feel and know the Loving Mystery by which and for which we are created.

We are … or can be … light savers for each other, gathering up the moments, holding them to our hearts and sharing the light that touches our lives. For what we have seen and heard, what we have touched and hold dear, is our gift, no, God’s holy gift, to be shared with hearts close to us and perhaps strangers on our way, all of whom are no less needy that ourselves.

For the fulfillment of our humanity is not known in splendid isolation or the sweetness of morning reflection, holy as that is. Our soul’s delight is the joy that engulfs our hearts when the light who shines on our lives is shared.

All that is light draws us toward the Loving Mystery who is from the beginning and who shines most fully in the gracious face of Jesus, the Son of this Holy Mystery, whose unfailing love is the fullness of our joy.