No Dimmer Switches

considering the light/s within us

This is the first of I’m not sure how many short pieces about light.

I am a lover of light.

As much as I have tried to make friends with darkness over seven decades, it is still not the friend with which I choose to hang out.

The youngest in my family, I was earliest to bed. My last words each night after saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” were, “Leave the hall light on.” That was far more important to me than “if I should die before I wake…”

I love the longest days of light and sometimes imagine living in the northern hemisphere for half the year and southern hemisphere for the other half. Perhaps it’s not too late! Anyone prone to SAD understands. Light makes a difference.

More important to me than physical light, which means it is vitally important, is the light from within, the light of the soul, the light of the heart, the light of the spirit – wherever it is that we want to place it/hold it, and maybe all three – light that has the capacity to encompass or touch in such a way that life shifts, even if for a moment, when we receive it or when we gift it to someone else.

A few days ago, as I was journaling about light, I glanced up, humorously distracted by my cat chasing a twirly toy around the dining room. In that moment, I also happened to glance at the dimmer switch on the wall.

Turning back to my journal, I wrote: We must do away with all “dimmer switches” that diminish our being light in this world right now.

I was writing for all of us. This is not just to call forth my own presence. It is a call to locate any and all “dimmer switches” inside of us that keep us from being the light/s that we can be.

It is a call to dispose of the dimmer switches and share our light/s in the various worlds we inhabit, from family and friends to colleagues to those we pass on the sidewalk to community to causes we support and to those with whom we might have significant differences and challenging relationships and to the clerk or stranger in line at the grocery store.

What might be an example of an interior “dimmer switch” to which I am referring? I immediately think of three.

One - being so consumed with the hard, challenging, discouraging, difficult, overwhelming things we bear or bear witness to that we forget we have any light at all inside of us. We endlessly scroll through the hard news and get sucked in as if that is all there is

Two - fear/s – if we dare to shine light we will be criticized or perhaps thought of as not living in the reality of the suffering around us and the world or perhaps too happy or too joyful – and the list goes on

Three – and perhaps most importantly, we have forgotten our light.

Let me leave this first piece with a prompt:

Pick up a pen or go to your keyboard or simply sit in silence or take a meditative walk and give these three questions the grace of time – time of being:

1. What is a light inside me, unique to me, that would deeply benefit the world right now if I am willing to share it?

2. What is keeping it dim or dimmer than my intention?

3. How might my light touch and help sustain someone if I turn it all the way up?

As I watch the sun go down on this day, soon to move to darkness, please know that the world needs your light/s and I pray we will remember each of ours and, if they have been dormant or we think they won’t make a difference, to know they absolutely will. The cumulative effect has the capacity to be lifechanging.

To be continued…