Fall break is right around the corner, and everyone is
feeling the need. It’s been a hard
week for most of us, though sunshine after weeks of grey has helped to raise
some spirits. For me, the old
darkness seems merely to have deepened, the fog grown denser, as the skies have
brightened; and the sun’s promise just makes the mood worse.
The promise is real, of course, and it keeps me alive and
functioning; some days I do this well and others not so much. The ones closest to me pay the most in
having to endure, and I am grateful more than they will ever know for their
love and laughter and the simple comfort of knowing they will now and always refuse
to be driven away. Their reward
shall be great.
I’ve written before that the sun can seem too bright, too
harsh, despite its gift of life.
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant,” Emily Dickinson wrote; “Too
bright for our infirm delight / The Truth’s superb surprise [. . .].” I am indeed infirm, and the moon eases
me more, offers me light in doses I can survive. And this morning there she shone as I left, in the early still-black
sky a lovely crescent in direct line with Venus and Jupiter to bid me good day and remind
me of all I am – mere reflected light, and if today is closer to the new moon
than the full, I am still His, to do with as He will, to shine if and as He
pleases.
Strength for all of us, Father, in facing the various demons
that plague us. Strength to do the
next thing, to smile when it hurts, to love and accept love when feelings scream
against it, to let ourselves remember and be what we are. In Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words:
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the
features of men's faces.
Christ in us – all that matters.
