marbled in a gray world

To live in the world is to live with shadows, even more it is to create shadows. In a universe that revolves around a sun, to live is to cast shadows. As objects living in relation to light we are shadow makers. There are only a few times when we don’t have a shadow, high noon and cloud cover at night. All three are inescapable realms of life.

Night is often be feared. Our difficulty seeing at night often heightens our fear of the unknown. Crime, secret rendezvous, espionage, and all manner of sneakiness are perpetrated under the cover of dark. Yet “dark” is so much more. Though sometimes frightening, the night is also is our time for rest. Work ceases, communities gather to tell stories and dance, night is for intimacy and expressions of love. This light/dark dance is a daily rhythm. Every moment is either growing darker or lighter; it is simply the way life works on planet earth; a constant move from one to the other.

Grey fails to the dance of light and dark. It seems to me that marble may be a better metaphor for capturing the complex rhythms that is life in the lived in the to its full. Few things are simple as black and white sound. This either/or myth can be a destructive force. Learning to love the undulating ribbons of light and dark may hold something profound for us. Why should we separate what Creator has joined?

Remember God’s first act of creation in the Genesis one account is to separate light from dark. The separation was not the whole story. God names the complex relationship of light and dark “day.” Darkness and light in relationship together is what God calls good.

Cloud cover forms when the convergence of the invisible warm water vapor in the air with cool air or surface condenses the vapor into visible water droplets or ice crystals. Basically cloud cover is about convergence, warm meets cool. What happens when “my world” meets your “your world”? When my cool front (my last name is pronounced “freezen”) meets your warm front. Sometimes I get steaming mad; sometimes my thinking gets foggy, still other times my vision clouds over. When opposing forces collide clouds, thunder storms, or even tornados are likely to follow. Clouds also give us rain, and who would chose draught over rain. The collision of worlds is vital to life.

At first glimpse the shadowless state of high noon seems so perfect. High noon is life directly under the sun, life without shadows. Well that’s not entirely true; at high noon we stand on our shadows. The short period of time directly around high noon exposes sun-dwellers to the dangers of sun stroke, sun burns and dehydration like no other time in the day. One of the challenges of being in the sun is that we are often having so much fun that we lose track of time and before we know it we look like lobsters, feel faint and are in desperate need of a cool drink and some shade. To live in the sun requires time in the shade and vis versa.

What about good and evil?

peace, dwight