Sunflowers & Souls: From Mind the Light

(from Mind the Light)

Light: Without it we die. Physically.Spiritually.

Our very lives depend on light for photosynthesis—energy from sunlight that converts into adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the fuel used by all living things. That’s why sunflowers track the sun across the sky, sea otters bask while floating in the ocean, and I look for an excuse to go to Florida in January. All God’s creatures move toward the light—flowers, trees, people. Light is constant and ever present. At least that’s what we assume. Then the power goes out or a month of clouds rolls in. We grumble and moan and whine until the light comes back.

But even more than physically, we respond to illumination emotionally and spiritually. Light—depending on its strength, tone, slant—changes how we perceive the world and people. Light sets a Midwestern sunset apart from a Western desert sunset, a Goya portrait from a John Singer Sargent portrait, and a joyful spirit apart from a mournful one. Yet even though light is all around us, we often don’t notice it and the difference it can make in our souls. That’s where an old Quaker saying—“Mind the Light”—offers help. “Mind” in this case means many things—including heed, tend, notice, observe, and obey. Minding the Light is a way of deep seeing.

I need help seeing. I’ve been nearsighted since high school and joined the bifocaled folks when I turned forty. I’m also diabetic. That means I go to my optometrist annually and have my eyes thoroughly checked. At a recent examination, Dr. Groninger talked me into trying contact lenses.

I liked the immediate results. I looked days younger with them—so much younger I considered getting a toupee and dyeing my beard. But I had trouble reading. I saw faraway stuff. But not near. The first day I went out to lunch with people from the office and picked up the check. That’s about all I did, because I couldn’t read it. I had to trust a coworker to fill in the amount for the tip.

So I went back to the doctor. She made an adjustment. Much better. I could read. But then I started driving. My distance was blurrier. Another week and I was back. “What do you think?” Dr. Groninger asked. “Well, I like not messing with glasses. I like the freedom. But I’m still having trouble— now it’s distance.” “Let’s try modified monovision.” She explained that she was going to power up my left eye for reading and my right eye for distance. “Oh, we’re going to trick my brain, huh?”

“Not really,” she said. Then she explained that sight already tricks our brains. We favor one eye over the other all the time, based on what our needs are. If we’re in a concert and someone with a big hat sits in front of us, the eye that can see the show tells the brain, “Hey, pay attention here and forget that hat.” And we do. So now I’m learning to see in a new way and tell my brain what to pay attention to.

The poet Tess Gallagher writes:

My father loved first light.

He would sit alone

at the yellow formica table

in the kitchen with his coffee cup

and sip and look out . . .

My father picks up his

cup. Light is sifting in

like a gloam of certainty

over the water. He knows

something there in the half light

he can’t know any other way.

That’s what Mind the Light is about: A way to learn things in the light, whether at Formica tables with coffee cups or quietly reading a spiritual memoir or in the middle of our workaday world. Minding the Light adds a further dimension to eyes and brain: our souls. It helps us pay attention to God’s Light around us and in us. How we see our lives changes as this illumination leads us to a deep appreciation of the soulful things of life. Minding the Light is an invitation to experience a new way of seeing that shows our brains and souls what to pay attention to. It’s a way of seeing our inner and outer lives with spiritual eyes and discovering the connectedness between inner and outer sight.

Throughout Mind the Light you’ll encounter boxed text labeled “Illuminating Moments.” These are meant as brief exercises in Minding the Light. Illuminating Moments are based on the Quaker practice of asking Queries. The Religious Society of Friends (as Quakers are officially known) have used Queries for almost 350 years as a way to examine our souls, seek clarity, and gain spiritual insight. Queries are a practice that can be used by anyone looking for God’s Light in life. The Illuminating Moments in this book are not about mystical experiences of God, though they may occur. As you read the Illuminating Moments, let your mind and soul fill with words, ideas, or images. Using the Light of God inside and outside you, look deeply into the Holy.

Learning to Mind the Light is CPR for the soul. It’s an encounter that will save your light. 

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the above is an excerpt from Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes which is now available for $2.99 on Kindle.   You can download a free sample chapter!

See The Goodness of the Lord -- Days 18-20

I have enjoyed a calvacade of sights the past few days. From road trip scenery traversing southwestern Indiana, to a mama deer and her youngster eating off the hazelnut bush in the front yard at Ploughshares -- undisturbed by my walking out onto the front porch to watch them, to Gracie the wonder cat taking on a dog four times her size (she's graceful, but not always grace-giving), to the faces of old friends.

This latter sight was especially enjoyable. I ventured back to Friends Memorial Church in Muncie where I used to be the pastor. It was their annual simple gifts holiday bazaar and I was invited to offer some of the smple gifts in the form of selling my books. So I sat with my buddy Alan Garinger (great books for young readers) in the Library/book-sales room and we drank coffee and told lies to each other (that's what writers do) and sold a few books. In between Alan and me telling lies, though, I watched people. Mostly people who were members of FMC when I was their pastor eight years ago.

Of course, they (unlike me) had all aged. Even the kids. I knew this happened, of course, but for some reason many of these good people were frozen in my memory at the time I left in 2001. And while some looked unchanged, others -- at each of the spectrum, old and young -- had changed drastically. But, regardless, I was blessed by seeing them all and by being back in a place that not only tolerated my quirks as a pastor, but actually (for the most part) embraced them.

The highlight that day, though, was when two people from the first Friends meeting I pastored arrived. They had driven 28 miles to shop and see me. I was touched. Marcella Keys arrived thanks to the driving her of her daughter Nancy and we spent a nice time chatting and remembering my days at Jericho Friends.

I look back on those days and I see the failings -- the young, know-it-all pastor who needed way more humility, compassion, and a heart for people than he had. I remember the harsh words I spoke and the times I didn't visit enough.

But Marcella and Nancy did not see those things -- instead they saw only the good things. At least at this 30 year remove. I was grateful. For in their seeing me as I had hoped to be, I saw their love and forgiveness and charity. I saw their gratitude for the good gifts I had offered whilst there and grace for mistakes.

I saw blessing and continue to feel that blessing from them.

-- Brent

The photo is of me in my young preacher days at Jericho.

See The Goodness of the Lord -- Day Two

An amazing sight. That's what I experienced today. No, it was not the pink-tinged clouds of the superlative sunrise this morning -- though it was wonderful. It wasn't any of the things that normally capture my photographer's eye.

Instead it was a man with gift. For me.

I was sitting in my office this afternoon when my phone buzzed. "You have a guest," said Janice, one of the Center's administrative assistants. I walked out and there stood Roger.

Roger, for those of you who have not read this blog very long, is a bagger at the O'Malia's store next to our office. He's a very interesting fellow: one I would have ignored though, truth be told, until he opened my eyes with conversation one day. I often stop in that store to grab something for lunch and about five years ago Roger began speaking to me -- first by asking "How's my favorite living Quaker theologian?" (How'd he know I was a Quaker? was my first thought) and then by talking about Kierkegaard and other theologians.

But our conversations had always been confined to the check-out line at the grocery.

Until today. When I came out out into the lobby and there stood Roger, with his ever-present hat on, bundled up for his walk home, and holding a bag. "Hi," he smiled, shyly, and reached the bag out to me. "I was culling my bookshelves and came across some volumes I thought you might enjoy." And he held the bag out tentatively to me.

I took it and he began shuffling sideways toward the door. "I didn't mean to bother you," he said.
"You didn't bother me," I replied lamely. "This is a wonderful gift."

"Well, I hope you enjoy them. Goodbye,now." And he was gone.

I opened up the bag -- double bagged so the weight wouldn't rip through the sack, so like Roger. And there was a collection of Quaker related books -- including the classic Testament of Devotion by Thomas R. Kelly. It was all I could do not to weep. Here was this gift of books -- one of the most precious things in the world to me -- from an unlikely friend who is still teaching me to value that of God in everyone one, especially and including those who are not from my social set.

I saw love in action. I saw God in this kind, humble man -- for whom the most I have ever done is have the occasional fleeting conversation about God or politics or human rights or existentialism (about which he knows a great deal more than me) in the check-out line. I was blessed by sighting grace at work -- a humbling vision, clothed as I was in nice, new shoes, shirt and tie and coming as it was clothed in a ball hat and work clothes and a double-bagged set of books.

-- Brent