Paradox

I am surrounded by mounds and mounds of “things” and yet the most precious thing in the room to me right now is the way the sun streams in through the bars on our dining room window…

Every speck of dust shows swimming in the current of that light.  They look beautiful.  Things that shouldn’t be sparkly, gleam.  That’s what the light of the sun does.  The world is dark and dull, filled with grey, asleep at the wheel.  Suddenly there is a scuffling and unexpected movement; there is sound.  Murmurs rise giving way to a slow and peaceful, quiet and personal birth to a new day.  In a moment the Sun appears and the moment goes unnoticed by most because it looks no different, really, from the moment before… unless you are there, right there on the cusp of the change… unless you are paying attention like a wise one watching the sky or a simple man going about your simple work at just the right time.  Unless you are paying attention, you have no idea that the world is about to light up with radiance.  In the following moments the clearings are illuminated and shadows emerge, shown for the first time in daylight for what they are, dark places… for dark does not distinguish between a shadow and light, it is all one… they do not exist in the dark.  So, unexpectedly, something as dirty as dust becomes it’s own small light, floats gracefully in the illumination of the sun, dancing… dancing… and we see that it is dirty, we know what dust is, but that does not diminish its beauty in the sun.  The world is full of small surfaces that catch fire, burn dazzling in reflection… a million points of light that are nothing in themselves but find their beauty under the gaze of the their illuminator.

 

*****

 

Photo credit: fusion-of-horizons / Foter.com / CC BY

Photo credit: Neal. / Foter.com / CC BY

Photo credit: Martin Gommel / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA