In the Balance

Walking away from the river with Toby this afternoon I became aware of a certain quality of light that made everything around us glow. When I looked up to see what was going on, the first thing I noticed was how vivid the new greens seemed. The second thing I noticed was the sky. 

It was split almost perfectly in half. One side blacker than the end of love. The other side full of story book clouds glued to the best blue an imagination might create.

I'd been pondering my day. 

I spent the morning at a doctor's office for a consult for a procedure that every responsible adult with health insurance is expected to have when they turn fifty. It's no accident I'm seven years beyond that time. I'm terrified of anything medical. This is my year to overcome that fear and to reconnect with my body. However, overcoming and extinguishing are not quite the same thing.

I rewarded myself with lunch with a fairly new friend. A wise and wild and wonderful woman whose friendship is a measure of my healing and my ability to be the friend in return of such a person. Three hours of nonstop talking left me feeling light and happy and full of power.

As I watched the sky later, yin and yang without the curls, I saw with such beautiful clarity that it's only in witnessing the presence of darkness that light reaches its full glory. Darkness cannot be healed or wished or prayed away. It is. Light cannot be full enjoyed without the contrast darkness provides. 

For a moment, in that field, I stood in perfect balance. And that's when I noticed the third thing. At the demarcation of light and dark, a rhododendron bush in full bloom. The red blossoms throbbing with a lusty light that was the perfect child of life and death, love and loss, joy and fear.

photos from Flickr