Three sunny days. Six days with a little sun. That’s where we are in Indiana so far in 2023. That’s 13 days of grey, cloudy skies. I’ve written about it on more than one occasion… but the permacloud is oh so real, and I can say from experience that the lack of sunlight definitely has an affect on my emotional well-being. Are you with me, my fellow permacloud dwellers?
It’s hard to find beauty in the dreary, when everything is flat and dull and there are no strong shadows of contrast; when the trees have no leaves and the world is all shades of grey. Even though I believe that beauty is all around us — you just have to look and find it in the unexpected and unusual — some days you just can’t seem to muster up the ability to locate it. It’s like a weighted blanket of oppression that is hard to shrug off.
As a photographer, it can be nice to take photos of people outside when it is not super sunny. There is no squinting or random light spots on people’s faces. A cloudy day can also give you some dramatic images with thick billowing clouds of dark and light. The pale slate skies though… those are tough. Bland. Bleh. Meh.
Yet you know that above that expansive status cloud of dull, flat, grey … the sun lives. The light is brilliant and amazing; and you wish you could poke holes in the sky with a long pole to let some of those beams of light through to bring just a little bit of sunlight to earth.
I was looking back on my Facebook memories a couple days ago and saw an entry about my mother and I. When I was a baby, she made a journal entry and said that my first word was light. This was interesting to me because in the Christian story of creation, the Divine’s first act of creation was the statement, “Let light be.” Light is a powerful symbol — for life, for joy, deliverance, truth, illumination. It encompasses the pure, the good, the opposite of darkness and evil. It reveals the hidden. So when we think of that first act of creation, isn’t it odd that light is created when nothing else existed? No only is there nothing to see, but there is no one to see it. I read an interesting thought. “When G-d was about to create heaven and earth… (meaning, before G-d have even started) at that point, He set a mandate: ‘Let it be light.’ He set the purpose and meaning of everything about to be created: that it should become light. That explains why, after He creates each thing, G-d looks at it and ‘sees that it is good.’ It is good because each creation has its own unique way to shine that light. Once all is complete, G-d says, ‘it is very good.’ When you have man things each saying the mare thing it their own way, and they are all in harmony, then it’s beautiful. It’s the ultimate light. And for that ultimate light to shine, a story must first unfold.” *
The story of light is woven through the scriptures; it’s throughout the tapestry of history; and it’s a part of each of our individual stories. These defining moments of illumination can cause us to grab hold of a revelatory truth; it can allow us to clearly see something in a way we never saw before; or it can let us experience the Divine in a personal way. “Let there be light” is the essence of illumination. It was at that moment that darkness was banished … and no longer would darkness ever overcome the light. In the book of John, Jesus made the declarative statement: “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you will not have to walk in darkness because you will have the light that leads to life” (8:12). We are all called to be bearers of light. (As an aside, that is what the word Potawatomi means.) In Matthew 5:14, Jesus said that we are light for the world. We carry the light of Christ within us and like a city of a hill that can’t be hid at night, we have the ability to provide illumination, hope and life to those we encounter.
So even though grey skies may mask the light, and the clouds obscure it, it is only temporary. You know? We have such a great light inside of us, and we get to partner with the One who created that light before all this that we know came to be. That’s pretty amazing! (It’s also significant to me that it was my first word and that mom thought to write that down.)
Be light and life my friends!
* https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2872943/jewish/Let-There-Be-Light.htm