Framing Light
No one says my name like Janie did. There was a tone; it contained warmth, it contained love. There was a feeling; I instantly felt welcomed, whether in a voicemail message or at the front door. In person, my name was accompanied by a hug that made the transition between where I had been and my arrival full of ease. There was a knowing; I was secure and seen. There was time; Janie would take the time to listen and inquire with deep care. There was time; I always thought there was more time, a next time, a future time.
The full spectrum of my stepmom Janie is hard to pinpoint, but describing the way she said my name is my effort to express a fraction of her spirit. I pick up my camera and pen in the same way — with a desire to bring to focus my contemplation of light in its full spectrum of expression. This begs the following question: How do I bring light into focus, given that light is impossible to capture?
From a technical perspective, the camera requires and focuses light. A camera lens takes light rays into a single point to create a sharp image. The shutter of the camera is “released” so that it opens to capture a picture and then closes. One of the ironies of the camera, and a paradox of life, is that it allows you to “capture” something — a moment — that is, in fact, already gone.
In the book Luminous Darkness, meditation teacher, spiritual activist, and author Deborah Eden Tull describes this fact perfectly: “Life is a constant transient cycle of creating and letting go, birth and death, emerging and dissolving, light and dark.” My photograph — my attempt to capture light — is an expression of creation, of letting go, of emerging into the world, and then dissolving into nothing. The cycle then begins again.
In this current cycle, similar to the workings of a camera, I am pinpointing light as both a noun and a verb. I am capturing light with all of its permutations and contrasts.
When approaching light as a noun, I consider the perception of color itself: color is literally light made visible. When approaching light as a verb, I consider light’s interplay with gravity. We can experience lightness as the lifting of burdens in instances such as play, meditation, love, and community. In the same satisfying way that a camera “clicks,” our sense of self can also be approached through a lens of enlightenment. Light as an “aha” moment, for example: the moment that an idea or concept finally makes sense and “clicks.”
And what of those instances when the distinction between light as a noun and verb becomes blurred? This is when light performs as love — a grounding practice. This is when the gradations between light and shadow embed themselves into our emotions and processes of healing.
The gradations of light and shadow also raises the question: What does it mean to see by moonlight? To see in the dark? The near or total absence of light requires slowing down; it offers fertile ground for intuition, rest, and growth.
GRAVITY’S SHADOW
The American author Anthony Doerr put it succinctly: “What do we call visible light? We call it color.” Color is perceived as the different qualities of light being reflected or emitted by an object’s light absorption, reflection, emission spectra, and interference. When light shines on an object, certain colors bounce off the object while others are absorbed by it. The naked eye can only perceive the colors that are bounced off or reflected from an object.
Everyone who knew Janie would say that she was a color. A bright, bright color, such as a vibrant yellow full of energy and warmth. Janie became my step-mom when I was five, and she died in late 2021.
Loss comes in as many forms as there are colors; leaving a marriage, leaving a job, leaving a home, ending a friendship. They all feel like a form of death, and each must be interiorized, processed, and integrated. This process may feel like creating a muddy mix of dull colors — the feeling that one is not doing it “right.” However, if we, as Tull says, embrace everything in our experience and honor the multidimensionality of who we are, then we lift the burden of dualities like “positive” or “negative” or “right” or “wrong” and fully experience life happening: full spectrum living.
If color is visible light, then what can be found in shadows? The sundial is a fascinating way our human ancestors measured light, or more accurately, measured sunlight’s shadow. The earliest type of timekeeping device, the sundial indicates the time of day by the position of the shadow of an object exposed to the sun’s rays.
As the sun moves across the sky, the shadow moves and indicates the passage of time. Gravity is a relentless force that holds the planets in orbit around the sun, just as the dial in a sundial is relentless in its uniformity. It must be consistent in order to serve its purpose.
But on some days, those shadows feel longer. The loss of love casts a long shadow of grief; here, time can feel less like a steady rhythm and more like a force that brings change to bear. Time can feel violent. One day Janie is with us and the next day she is not. Time ran out. Tull says that one can choose to commune with darkness, but one can also experience, as was in my case with Janie, the light suddenly gone out — the sundial removed, consistency shattered — and one is left to face vulnerability and impermanence.
Death is at once a sudden imposition of gravity and the light gone out. Death is also a release of gravity’s hold on a person to this earth and release from pain and suffering. Death is a universal experience, but when one personally witnesses it, it can also feel extraordinary.
Damon Locks and Black Monument Ensemble’s song “Stay Beautiful” is a gorgeous and moving poem that anyone who has been in a helpless situation will understand — and particularly anyone who has been a patient in a hospital or at a hospital bedside.
I have listened, cried, and sung along to this song; eventually, it became a permanent fixture in my grieving process. It became a soundtrack, more or less, to my years of “light.” Perhaps it can be a comfort to you too:
Visiting hours are always over
Blueish light flickers in through the doorway left ajar
The sheet and the blanket are not quite warm enough to keep the chill from your bones after the sun has gone down
The light coming in from the street was just bright enough for me to make out the words
We see you. We love you. Stay beautiful.
All the qualities of light are captured in this poem: The sense of illumination, the distance we have from the source of light, a flickering light from the hallway, the faint light from the streetlamp. Without sufficient illumination we cannot see; however, one who listens to their intuition does not lose sight even in darkness.
And what of this other quality of light — warmth? And the contrasting feeling of the chill in the bones after the sun has set and the sheets and blankets are not quite warm enough. The chill of loneliness: visiting hours are always over.
The worst time of the day was when I had to leave Janie in the hospital alone. No light, no sun, no blanket warm enough to shake the chill of cancer — no one except my sister, who was often able to persuade hospital staff to bend the rules and allow after-hour visits. I am grateful to my sister for being our sun in those instances.
The sun makes flowers grow. The sun is the star at the center of the solar system. The bouquet of flowers in the hospital room said, in the words of the Ensemble, “we are your flowers. Breathe in the fragrance. Drink in the color. Let it surround you.” Janie was the star at the center of our family system. Janie’s art and meditation practice was to spend hours in her garden tending to her flowers. Breathe in the fragrance. Drink in the color. Let Janie’s warmth, love, and beauty surround you.
Janie is no longer physically present, and I often feel as if I have been knocked off my center. Longing can be a disorienting feeling. Grief is a longing. A yearning desire to see the person who is gone one more time. Where is my center when one of the people I love most in the world is gone? How do I get it back? When one loses a source of love/light, the gravitational field is altered and must be re-negotiated.
The French philosopher Simone Weil said that love is light. Weil also said that “two forces rule the universe: light and gravity.” By extension, since love is light, love rules the universe. If love is light, then love makes things visible; love brings enlightenment and understanding. Love is not heavy. Love is gentle, love brightens, love is joy. If I am a student of the light, I also must practice self-love, which helps me inch back toward my center. In fact, the definition of gravity is the force that attracts a body toward the center of the earth. Light and gravity ruling the universe, guiding me.
Gravity is one of the major forces that creates the ocean tides. It is also in the waves and beach sky, where the movement of light is revealed in the most expansive field above us. Gravity is also the place where horizon meets ocean. This is the place that held me in the twilight of Janie’s life and after Janie died. Crossing the threshold from street to sand is a huge whoooosh. I enter the sacred space of ocean and sand, and weight lifts off my shoulders as the smell of the ocean clears everything. Is it the ions? The gentle, repetitive sounds? The consistency of meeting something different with each visit . . . either I have changed, or variation exists in the tides, swells, seaweed, sand, shells. All this contributes to my growth as I am holding the new shapes of grief and loss inside of me.
TRUSTING IN THE MOON(LIGHT)
Night vision requires that the eye shifts its reliance from “cones” to “rods.” Cones require light and perception of color; we have about 6–7 million of them within us. Rods are adept in low light; in comparison to cones, we have more than 120 million rods within us! Thus, it is only when light is largely absent that humans can access a different type of vision. I find it comforting that we have a tremendous amount of rods to help us do so.
One way to see in the dark is by the light of the moon, guided by its reflective light. “To find your way by moonlight” is a “different way of seeing,” as described by Jungian analyst and author Jean Shinoda Bolen. It taps into our inner wisdom and to our innate connection to the moon’s waxing and waning. The moon connects me to meditative experiences, the sensing of subtler energies, and the capacity for inner reflection to consider motivation and meaning.
Dwelling in the moonlight is serendipitously perfect at this time of my life. The archetype of the full moon resonates for me. Solidly in midlife, I am mature and less innocent than during my youth (waxing moon), although I still have many lessons to learn before I enter elderhood (waning moon). No matter which stage one is at, one can benefit by tapping into the moon’s complexity and taking the opportunity to balance the external and active qualities of the sun.
Pearls have a pallor resembling that of the moon — opaque, lustrous, glistening. The inner glow of the pearl reflects the wisdom of a journey and experience; the moon is also forged at the helm of the life/death/rebirth cycle. The moon is cool, natural, and elemental; its reflective light forces us to see with the inner eye. It takes courage to accept our inner knowing, especially if it means that something, maybe even everything, in our life must change. For we are of the moon and yet, we live our lives in the day.
Like the pearl, Tull reminds us that much of our natural processes for growth are dependent on darkness — decomposition, hibernation, germination, gestation, and transformation. Darkness is fertile, instinctive, and creative. Consider the transformation of a caterpillar to butterfly: metamorphosis is not possible without resting in the darkness and completing the cellular reorganization of the cocoon.
These days, I sometimes feel as if I can only see by the light of the moon because I cannot see beyond my immediate next step. In the darkness, the eyes undergo transformation as my rod cells adapt and eventually adjust and things begin to sharpen and shape before my eyes, both literally and figuratively. This process reflects the moon and her never-ending cycle of change.
Tull concludes that in times of transition and discomfort, striving for something else just makes us feel worse. Wholeness and peace result from being with what is. This is about the sufficiency of the present moment, whether it is full of grief or joy, and holding both equally and with gentleness and care. It is also about trust in the wisdom or luminosity of the dark — not only cultivating trust in a period of transition, but also practicing trust throughout one’s entire life.
LIGHTEN UP
In addition to being created in the dark, pearls are created in synergy with another living creature. In my experience, being in synergy with others is the fullest expression of light as a verb. It is the illusion of a separate self that creates the heavy burden, which is naturally “lightened” by expanding a sense of identity to include others. I can share countless examples: the sadness and grief of loss in all its forms. Navigating a new consulting practice that often leaves me riddled with nerves and self-doubt. The vulnerability of creating and sharing my art with the world. There is also the trepidation of the unknown — how others will receive and react to my material — when I am teaching my mindful movement classes.
In all these experiences, the instant a person says, “I understand. I’ve been through that too,” we recognize the gift of universality, community, and connection. We create interconnected sources of support, solace, and celebration. In this gift of source and space, we are much less aware of “self” as an isolated, separate entity, and much more tuned into a sense of “oneness” and belonging.
I also received pearls of wisdom in contemplating the question: how does one lighten one’s load — energetically, physically, or both? The worry and uneasiness of anxiety often feels so heavy; thus, I tried an experiment of giving up anxiety for 40 days. This experiment followed working with a therapist who specializes in Internal Family Systems — a therapeutic lens that assumes each of us has many different parts within us. As we encounter a variety of situations, each of these parts may be consciously or unconsciously helping or harming us. Using this lens, I eventually learned that it is more accurate to say that I gave up saying, “I am anxious.” I gave up identifying with and focusing on my anxiety. Instead, anxiety is just one part of me. I am not anxiety. I am made of many parts, and sometimes the anxious one shows up. What does she need right now? She becomes more manageable and proportionate to all the other parts of me when I provide her a sense of levity, love, and compassion.
MEANDERING LIGHT
The irony does not escape me that the years contemplating light ended up being some of the darkest and heaviest years of my life. Multiple cancers, ventilators, countless hospitals, death, near death, and the personal and collective disturbance of a pandemic. I felt as if I was wearing a cloak of grief and depression. It was heavy and many sizes too big; I should have let it slip off my shoulders, but I kept catching the sleeves for fear of being too vulnerable, too alone.
One of the aspects of shedding an old life is shedding old narratives and finding the necessary quiet to listen to the truth within myself. And when light is a verb, as in the lifting of a burden, there are several burdens that must be lifted by light: excessively critical narratives and the belief that one must always be productive.
I revisit Weil’s understanding of the two forces that rule the universe: gravity and light. Gravity says that what goes up must fall down. At a certain point in my years of light, I could not avoid tiredness. I had to listen to the intuitive voice that whispered “come down.” Let gravity do its work. The lightness of quiet, stillness, and rest.
In Why We Sleep, psychologist and neurologist Matthew Walker describes the chemicals that bathe your brain when one is in a rest state. These chemicals help one forget trauma. Rest is a portal for healing and beyond by releasing trauma’s grip. When one is healed from trauma and exhaustion, one can begin to invent, imagine, embody pleasure, and claim our “DreamSpace” — as described by Tricia Hersey, the American poet, performance artist, activist, and founder of the organization The Nap Ministry.
The lightness of dream space, and meandering thoughts that float by as if they were carried on the wind, can be a source of healing. There is also the energizing moment of waking up from a satisfying cat nap or good night’s sleep. Walker described the essentialness of sleep for the brain; additional sources of sleep literature expand on how sleep affects almost every tissue in our bodies, our immune system, growth and stress hormones, breathing, appetite, blood pressure, and cardiovascular health. As I took a sabbatical of rest, a new entrepreneurial career took shape in my dream space, while also starting to heal stomach issues I had experienced for years.
While gravity helped pull me down to a quiet and still space to explore these personal benefits, I also must consider the other side of gravity: the status quo. For example, the narrative that we obtain our value in being productive rather than in the wholeness of humanity. I also consider the status quo of our painful racist and sexist systems. Hersey notes the benefits of rest for resistance, reparations, and collective liberation. Rest allows us to be resourced enough to continue the pursuit of systemic health at both the individual and collective levels, in defiance of the gravity of the status quo.
REFRAMING LIGHT
In a year entitled “light,” I suppose I should not be shocked by the variety that this year delivered. Only in rare circumstances is light uniform and constant. Art critic, novelist, and painter John Berger pointed out that light is marked by variety, exhibiting different and irregular patches and streaks.
I referenced some life experiences in this writing that felt particularly divergent from a “typical” year — some of which are life altering. Even if my life had been more stable and constant in the exterior markers, choosing the word “light” is apt for the irregular patches and streaks shining across my inner world: my heart, psyche, spirit. Light reforms space, and if this is not yet another year of my interior space being completely re-arranged, I don’t know what is.
The capacity to see my interior space seems an obvious definition of light: light is insight. Light illuminates as it helps one see literal objects, scenes, and figures, as well as oneself clearly. I needed two years of “light” as my word because I believe that we possess infinite depths — and learning about ourselves does not travel at the speed of light. Light is the fastest-moving thing in the universe, and the speed of light does not vary with time or place. Yet, self-discovery is a slow process, and one that in truth will never end and will certainly vary each year.
Wading in the darkness of my shadows in previous years led me to the contrary element of light; on a similar note, the exploration of light has now led me to one of its opposing forms of energy: slowness. I am contemplating “slowness” as my thematic word of the year. While moving slowly might seem frustrating, in reality it is the smartest and safest way to move when one is mostly walking in the dark. If one can embrace rest, one can be less frustrated with slowness and sheltering in the unknown. As soon as something comes into focus, one inevitably finds they must re-learn it, over and over again, bringing one back to the creative cycle of emerging and dissolving.
As I sought, and seek, to find my center in all of the transitions and permutations of light, I conclude by imagining all of the elements — the colors, the flowers, the waves, the moon, the pearls — joining in a supportive chorus, encouraging one to stay on the intuitive and imaginative course: “We see you. We love you. Stay beautiful.”
