from "Caring in Remembered Ways" by Maggie Davis

Caring in Remembered Ways
The Fruit of Seeing Deeply
by maggie steincrohn davis

a light in this world

Something splendid is rising -- above all that is harsh and cold, above all that is crumbling -- that feels bright and clean and new like springcoming. Television programs featuring life on other planets (as well as near-death experiences, angels, visions of light), compel increasing numbers of us to acknowledge the presence of something in ourselves which, when respectfully and fully examined, turns out to be golden.
Just as we have capacity for evil, so we have capacity for good. Truly, we are a glorious creation; no matter what is happening around us, always we can choose a higher road. Wherever we shine along the road, the world is not dark.

"There is a light in this world," said Mother Teresa at the end of the film documenting her work. The camera pulls back from hundreds of missionaries of charity, their white robes blurring into a screenful of shimmering brilliance.

We are light every time our humanity surpasses our technology. We are light each time our love for life supplants our clinging to worry, or conflict, or fixed belief -- or even to our pleasures. We are light each time we rejoice.
Many gleams, one beam, we are -- every animal, every flower, every bird, every fish, every tree, every rock, every insect, every ocean --every human being.

"We [are falling,] into the place," wrote Rumi, "where everything is music."

          A new world symphony has begun. It sounds a world, near at hand, where the well-being of every life reflects the well-being of all life -- and vice versa, where we care for one another as if we were each other's most beloved.
          In such a world, evil withers because of lack of our attention to it. A politics of kinship flourishes, each vote we cast, reflecting our all-embracing view. Compassion becomes as familiar to us as the rhythms of the seasons passing, as our breathing, as the rising and falling of our days and nights.
          Alone, yet in concert, we are going Home.

We are the angels we've been waiting for.
May we see freshly.
May we live truly.
May all we care for feel our lovings well.
May we be bright lanterns.

(Caring in Remembered Ways is available from Heartsong Books - Blue Hill, Maine)