My Cannas Are Dying, I See Light, I See Darkness

We've got a place "in the country" that we go to on weekends. Occasionally I wake up in the night needing to go the bathroom and I'm a bit disoriented about which bedroom I'm in. All I have to do to figure it out is to look for the light. At home, the window is on the wall to my left and there is a security light from someone's yard on another street that shines in that window. In the country, it is our own security light that shines in the window directly in front of the foot of our bed.

What I've been thinking is that when I am in a dark place in my life, I go through the same process in trying to orient myself as I do when I'm in the bed needing to get to the bathroom--I look for the Light. And usually I'm pretty good at finding it. I never do it perfectly, and sometimes it takes a bit of time wallowing in the dark, but I have, so far, been able to get there, to seeing the light.

I was sitting on the porch this afternoon and noticed the light shining on my dying cannas. It was beautiful. I don't know that my photos do the light justice. But also, the flowers are dying. Perhaps my photos do their dying justice. Winter is coming, I am surrounded by reminders of impermanence and loss.

I've been reading After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Kornfield. It's been a thought provoking book to read. I'm including a few quotes below with the photographs of my dying cannas.

"The middle path embraces opposites. It rests between them, acknowledging both truths, caught by neither side. In this way we can see from one perspective that human life is suffering, with its inevitable string of losses culminating in sickness, aging, and death. Tet from another perspective it is also grace--filled with gifts and blessings, expressing a divine beauty. Our very suffering can be seen as the grace that brings us to compassion, surrender, and humility." 

Jack Kornfield

 "With a strength of heart we can respond to the full range of human emotions, unafraid of feelings, neither identified with nor embattled by them. When we accept the feelings as impermanent and impersonal forces, we can be free to honor them without being shut down or frightened or caught by them." 

Jack Kornfield

"We cannot live only in the world of light." 

Jack Kornfield