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In this Holy-day season, LIGHT as an expression of the infinite Source of All fills our awareness in the world around us, and, if we are awake to it, within us and others.
LIGHT is the symbol of the infinite Source of ALL in many spiritual traditions both East and West at this time of year:
Chanukah -- the Jewish Festival of Faith and Victory whose foremost symbol is the lighted candles of the Menorah, celebrating the miracle of the holy LIGHT that continued to shine as the Temple's Eternal Flame even though the physical supply of oil was enough for only one day.
Christmas --- The LIGHT expressed in the story as the guiding Star of Bethleham.
"I AM the LIGHT" said the Rabbi from Nazareth whose birth is celebrated, and he continued, "The Kingdom of God (the LIGHT) is within YOU."
Lights on the trees. Lights in menorahs. Light from the fireplace. And if we look, the LIGHT in the eyes of each person we recognize as an expression of the LIGHT of Spirit.
What if the phrase, "Children of LIGHT" is not just a metaphor, but an accurate description of what we are made of?
Last week, I came upon an email that was sent to me in 2004 by Tom Fulton, a Core Wisdom On-Line subscriber. Tom shared a story about a conversation between the inventor and visionary R. Buckminster Fuller and a young girl. Reading it anew, I realized it was the perfect message to share with you in this sacred holy-day season.
Here is Tom's gift to us:
One winter evening, when the innovative engineer R. Buckminster Fuller was drinking tea by the fireplace of Professor Hugh Kenner, three-year-old Lisa Kenner prolonged her bedtime farewell with the question: "Bucky, why is the fire hot?" Kenner writes: Some instinct told Lisa that he was the man to ask. His answer, as he took her on his lap, began, like most of his answers, some distance away from the question. "You remember, darling, when the tree was growing in the sunlight?" On arms like upgroping branches, his hands became clusters of leaves as he described their collecting the sunlight, processing its energies into sugars, drawing them down into a stocky trunk. "Then the men cut it down, and sawed it into logs. And what you see now" ---he pointed to the crackling hearth---"is the sunlight, unwinding from the log."
(Tom then added the following comment about the above story) "One thing I always remembered about that story is the implication that potential energy is stored within seemingly inert matter. As scientists learn more about the Big Bang, and the earliest moments of the universe, and as they learn more about the seemingly miraculous behavior of subatomic particles, the transformation of energy to matter and matter into energy becomes more tightly woven into our experience of reality. In a very real sense, therefore, our lives are another manifestaion of sunlight unwinding from our bodies."
To Tom and all of you, may your Holy-days and your New Year be filled with LIGHT, and may the joy, love, and peace that arises within when we awaken to the realization of our true nature be your within and without!
Love, Shalom, and Namaste,
-- Hal Isen
From Core Wisdom On-Line Number 90 - December 24, 2008
A Core Wisdom Quote
Allow attention to inquire upwards, into the
The small self enters delicious omnipresence,
Gradually the luminosity of that truth 541-488-7687 |
