Hello

so good to see you

Emily Dickinson once wrote a private letter in which she described moving to a new house and losing some of her belongings. I am out with lanterns, looking for myself, she wrote. In the context of the letter, it was a wry description of her lostness, the specific spatial disorientation of transplanting to a different environment, of opening the silverware drawer and only seeing batteries, of not being able to find the favored mug or whisk. When I first read this, it sounded lonely and a little dark, but I also thought about my own life and knew what she was talking about. It might be because I am also facing a move and a lot of losses, but out with lanterns, looking, is a fair description of the early middle-aged spot I seem to be inhabiting.

Light lives here, but it’s a lot more like lanterns than high noon. There’s a great deal of searching: for myself, for flickers of grace, embodiment, good pastries, my glasses. The years have taken from me certainty. No more easy answers. I’ve been given instead: patience with pain, awareness of the small wonders constantly surrounding us, and glimpses of the face of God, which is always turned to His children with seeing love.

It doesn’t seem dark to me anymore, being out with a lantern, looking. It’s a sign that I haven’t given up. We might be surrounded by darkness, but everywhere are people in their small circles of light, doing the best to love and bring order and goodness to their lives.

In the circle of light by the lantern, these days, I try and focus on what I can control, to stay present, give what I have to who’s in front of me. You are in front of me now, you reading this. Take a deep breath. Maybe two or three more. The world is a dangerous place and anything may be taken from you, but we are here, now, and so are the wild grasses and the gracious sunshine and God. God is here too.

Hello. Thank you for reading. I plan to write here what I wonder about: time, humans, suffering, love, stories and the many faces of light. I would love it if you’d join me.