As I looked out on the morning, autumn sunlight was filtering through the trees, touching the water droplets from a fierce early morning rain, and creating a burst of sparkle that played with the focus of what I was looking at. The potted Japanese maple on the deck is loosing its crimson foliage as the light of day slowly decreases. As we move through autumn, and come closer to winter, light and colours are two things that will change dramatically. You want to hibernate and be enfolded in the warmth of places that are safe and protected - where inner warmth and light make up for what this season cannot give us.
There are seasons in our lives when the questions have no answers, when the storms are wild and unrelenting and what grounds us seems threatened, when pain, physical and emotional, comes to steal life from us. At times fatigue is overwhelming and just getting through a day is hard work. Sometimes questions sit within us and while we long for answers, there are none forth coming. In the dark places we need light that opens us up to finding hope.
A number of years ago a friend said to me “I will hold you in the Light” and in the years since she has repeated those words to me. While I have always appreciated it when others have said they have prayed for me, this action of being held in the Light is deeply meaningful. It has moved me from the posture of telling the Almighty what I think should happen to moving into Holy Presence without an agenda - simply to hold another in this sacred place and to know I am held in the place without others deciding what way the Almighty should move in my life. Those words seem to be a warm embrace that puts no requests or conditions on how one should feel, how one should work through the questions, and it removes time limits on the grief or pain process.
John O’Donohue writes in his book Anam Cara that “Light is the secret presence of the Divine”. He also writes that “Light is incredibly generous but also gentle.”
To hold another in the Light you are asking for the secret presence of the Almighty (however the other sees the Divine) to tenderly hold the soul of the one you wait with. This action also requires that I wait in Holy Presence in the sense that I must hold my heart, mind and soul open to the unconditional loving gaze of the Holy One. This is not a place of fear but rather of opening your being in deep honesty in anticipation of that Love that transforms. The American Rabbi, Michael Strassfield says “Light gives itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return. It asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is thereby not diminished”.
Creativity releases our soul to speak through movement, words, music, art, through actions that are expressions of beauty, holding emotions and story in this ‘soul voice’. To be held in the Light is also asking the Spirit within you to move your soul, the essence of God’s image within you, to begin to speak in a way only you and the Almighty can write the duet. Being in the Light has one clear message - to bring forth life! O’Donohue also speaks of this when he writes that “creativity awakens at this primal threshold where light and darkness test and bless each other.” Therefore to hold another in the Light is to bring oneself to a place of life, and to simply request life for the other.
Holding another in the Light seems to be a way of acknowledging the Mystery - of not knowing or needing to know. It is a posture of simply allowing Holy Presence to hold you as you wait for/with another. The act of holding your own heart open with its own wounds while you hold up the wounds (often unknown to you) of another. This place seems to be less about movement and more about stillness, of choosing life in the midst of unknowns and chaos.
“May we be content to wait in peace, until You stir the waters within to act. May we be patient with ourselves and with others. O that we may have the light of wisdom, and the steadfastness of faith!”
Psalm 105 - translation by Nan Merrill in Psalms for Praying.
