Finding the Light

Last week many of us at the Mount were sad and discouraged because of the abrupt death of Sr. Carolyn Rohde and the necessity of new pandemic restrictions. It didn’t help that the skies were gray and the temperatures were frigid. It was easy to long for brighter days. However, today St. Leonie Aviat (1844-1914) reached across the years to provide a response to that desire in a quote provided in Give Us This Day: “You must not wish to live outside the ‘present moment.’ It contains the light that you must follow and the help necessary for each circumstance.”

Sometimes the light of the present moment seems very dim. In his poem about January called Runoff, Stanley Burris says,

Just get on with it,
doing what you have to do
with the gray palette that lies
to hand.

When we look at paint chips in the gray family, it’s easy to see that some are lighter, darker, cooler, or warmer based on how much white or cream is mixed in — but they all contain some measure of light. It might not be as much as we wish, but it is enough to let us recognize the help we require, whether it is birdsong or a silly situation to lighten our hearts or the listening ear of a supportive friend.

Darker days also increase our awareness that the light of God’s love is always with us: “Even in Sheol you are there,” as it says in Psalm 139. There are lessons we can only learn in dimness and darkness, it seems, but in those times we are never alone.

“The sun’s coming soon,” Burris says later in his poem. And we’ll welcome it, while recognizing that its light has been with us all along in another less conspicuous form.