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| a gift of Light for today ©A. Rutherford click photo to enlarge |
“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body.
When your eye is good, your whole body is filled with light. But when it is bad, your body is filled with darkness.
Make sure that the light you think you have is not actually darkness.
If you are filled with light, with no dark corners, then your whole life will be radiant, as though a floodlight were filling you with light.” Luke 11:34-36 (NLT)
After a rather rough few days during which I haven't posted, I will admit that my vision needed at least a slight adjustment. So you can imagine how I reacted when I looked up from where I was reading to see that the morning sun, which was just beginning to appear, was shining through the stained glass window in my little library and casting shadows on the opposite wall. I ran for my camera because I knew I would probably need this visual reminder again sometime to help me “reset my sights.”
One of the advantages of having lived longer is the insights we gain along the way. One of these insights is that the inner vision is often more accurate than the ocular vision. We also learn that the way we perceive, or receive, the things that happen to us can often shape our experience, but that we can reshape a difficult experience by thinking about it in a more positive way. Our attitudes are the lenses through which we see what we call reality, then we allow these attitudes to magnify or diminish, to clarify or darken, the experiences and the relationships we have. Had we thought differently about the experience, the “reality” of it might have been altogether different. Had we attended to our perception, fine-tuned our reception, we could have extracted what good there would have been even in the worst of circumstances.
This perception is not always easy to achieve in a world increasingly given to negativity born out of superficiality. “But bad things happen, even to good people,” the world protests! Yes, that is very true . . . it is foolishness to deny that suffering is a very real aspect of the human condition, but there is a higher viewpoint from which we should strive to look upon these things. And that higher viewpoint, that higher road to take in our pilgrimage, can only do us good, even in adversity. It will not change the circumstances, but it will change the way we experience the circumstances and help to bring forth what good may be achieved from whatever we face. We can feed on that goodness and draw strength and courage from it, which will then allow us to do good and thus transcend and ultimately overcome adversity. The eternal perspective is always the best one to take.
A sonnet from poet George Santayana expresses this perspective very well:
O World, thou choosest not the better part!
It's not wisdom to be only wise -
And on the inward vision close the eyes,
But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
Columbus found a world, and had no chart,
Save one that faith deciphered in the skies;
To trust the soul's invincible surmise
Was all his science and his only art.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine
That lights the pathway but one step ahead
Across a void of mystery and dread.
Bid, then, the tender light of faith to shine
By which alone the mortal heart is led
Unto the thinking of the thought divine.
I want to always be the one to say, when looking at the partially filled glass in my hand, “Oh good! It’s half full!” And to whatever extent I can, I want to translate that attitude to others through my own life. However imperfectly I now accomplish this, my goal and prayer is to grow more fully into allowing this stance to govern my life and my witness.
The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me
Serenity, to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage, to change the things I can,
&
Wisdom, to know the difference.
Amen
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