WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

August 15, 2021

ROUSING 

            It may seem strange to think of high-spirited ideas as forces that can ‘fall’ upon a person, but sometimes it does seem to happen, a sparkling thought suddenly swooping down on me like sunshine that sweeps everything else away. It can create a newness and impressiveness in my life, like a letting go of all that’s old while something fresh flows in. I’m one person one second, and then a thoroughly sunny idea sweeps into my life, and suddenly I’m someone new, someone I’ve never met. It feels like a mental flood has flowed through me, leaving something lighthearted and bright when it’s gone. For instance, occasionally this cheering idea drops down on me: thoughts are more powerful than things. It’s a simple concept, but one that has sometimes actually restarted my life, this idea that a far-reaching, hopeful thought can control and conquer any situation, no matter how menacing it might seem. Each time I understand, once again, that cheerful, confident thoughts inside me can speak with infinitely more force than any troublesome circumstance outside me, I feel startlingly free, totally fresh and remade. I feel reborn as a force, not of blood and bones, but of soul and spirit, all because of a single rousing thought from somewhere beyond and boundless. 

ALWAYS WAKING UP
(about Bernice D., 61, Blessings CT)

At 59,
on a sleepy, sultry day
she saw, for the first time,
that each moment is made new,
and that she, too, is always new -- 
a fresh, stirred up assembly of cells
every single second. 
She saw that, in a sense, 
she was always waking up,
and she realized 
that she can’t help it, 
that rousing and rising 
was just what the universe always does, 
constantly and endlessly 
spurring itself on. 
She realized that even 
the airless languor of the day
was continually awakening 
into new and unspoiled airless languor, 
and that even her fears and sorrows 
were unceasingly bestirring themselves
into unprecedented designs
so she could better see and understand them
 in every respect
in this always newly-alert world.