Dazzling Splendor

There is something very trusting, almost childlike, in the photo of the sunflower on the left with it's blossom head lifted to catch the warmth of the sun.

As I prepared to leave the house this morning to teach my wonderful group of 5th and 6th graders at church school this morning I was not feeling especially cheery and so I chose to hum a little ditty that generally lifts my heart: this little light of mine - I gonna let it shine - this little light of mine - I'm gonna let it shine .... let it shine; let it shine; let it shine!!!

When I chose to hum the little ditty this morning I was in many ways being like the sunflower and lifting my face to light I knew existed and all I needed to do was choose to experience the light already present for me. I've learned from past experience that an easy way to 'lift my face' is humming, and especially humming that has simple words attached. What I know is that as I hum the tune, the words will begin to swim around in my mind and as the swimming of words and humming pick up their pace, I begin to feel the intention of the song pulse through my body.

There are all kinds of ways to ignite intention: affirmations, images, music and deliberate reading to name a few but my favorite forms of ignition usually involve fire. I have about 20 candles running across my altar space and as I utter words of intention I watch the flame on the tip of the match join to the wick of the candle and burst into a flame. Over and over I utter intention and watch it ignite as a spark of fire. Flames dance. Flames illuminate darkness. The flame of a candle reminds me of one of my earliest family teachings.

When I was a child each dinnertime ended with a short, single page reading from a little book called Three Minutes A Day. I think it was named that because the reading only took about three minutes but since we we did this action every single evening, those minutes added up to a whole lot of time. What the minutes of reading and listening added up to was a particular orientation in life and that was the idea that it is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. The books were put out by a group called The Christophers and that was their motto and one way they put their motto into action was to compile short stories - three minute stories to be exact - that exemplified how an individual taking a single, often quite simple, action was able to change a circumstance and thus add a bit of light to the world.

I suppose what I grew up believing was that I carry light within me and that this light has been given to me ito share in the world. I was taught that my job regarding this light was to be awake to opportunities for choosing actions that added illumination to life. The really great thing about being given this instruction was that it was broken down into very small parts and therefore never seemed like an overwhelming task. Each evening as the words from the readings dripped into my brain, a pool of quite practical wisdom formed. This pooling of teaching told me that a smile, a thank you, listening to another, giving a helping hand and even when I chose to release my grip on a single dime and give it to be shared, then light was being shed.

Shedding light in the world was very much like choosing to join the daily scavenger hunt for the 100 blessings God has promised for me each day: the light was a promise of what is. Just like all I really need to do to discover the blessings is to be willing to see them and in my willingness to then orient myself to their reality all that is required to illuminate the world is to understand that even one little candle of light banishes some darkness. We never need to wait for the ability to do some grand gesture - although when we have enough light to share in a grand gesture, it is a very wonderful experience - in the meanwhile, we can determine to ignite as many small candles as possible in a single day. I would suspect that the one hundred blessings somehow correlates to one hundred opportunities to add light to the world.

Scattered around my house are sunflowers both in arrangements and in paintings reminding me that I really do believe that we are called to be a 'sunflower' for the world: we absorb the Light of goodness and love and then we share our bit of illumination in the world. I also have a card on my bookcase with a saying from The Kabbalah which sums up both the teaching from my childhood as well as my intention to live as a sunflower:

We receive the light,
then we impart it.
Thus we repair
the world.

Whatever bit of light we are able to share, no matter how small, does in fact, banish a bit of darkness. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine ... this little light of mine ... your light is never too little!!!