May 10, 2024 ~ Friday, Week 6
The sun
is the width of a
human foot.
~ Heraclitus*
Well, ok, then, maybe two human feet...and my first
reaction is to laugh at an old memory! I remember myself as a child lying on
the grass blocking the sun with my foot and feeling powerful. And there
you are, Sun, in all your resplendent presence pouring light upon us, brightening, dazzling, blinding, warming, heating, wilting, frying us, and then
suddenly we're chilled by a passing cloud!
So much of life is a matter of perspective. Seemingly too
much of a good thing followed by too much of a bad thing which makes the bad seem even worse than the good ever was...and here I am trying
to find balance, harmony, and just the right measure of objectivity. But when I
get swept away in emotion, I can easily lose my perspective and feel
overwhelmed. As in anyone's lifetime, there have been moments when I was so lost in love I could hardly think or breathe. There have been those deep and heavy times of grief that plunged me into such darkness, with the weight of all the world pushing me down, that I didn't want to see the sun again or ever just stand up. And then those moments when anger has sent my blood pressure nearly to
explosion. When the extremes of any kind of passionate response to life take over, truth is lost.
Help the soul You gave me Lord of Sun, Moon, and
Stars, to find the warming light of You in the darkness, the cooling shade of
You in the heat, the balance between want and need, and, the wisdom to check
the width of the sun in my heart every now and then. amen.
*Heraclitus
was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher born to an aristocratic family in Ephesus
in what is now Turkey. He insisted that the "only constant is change"
and most famously that "No man steps into the same river twice."
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