Another Monday. The sun peeked over the horizon, stretching its reach across a yawning vista. Grays blushed crimson as the sky blinked awake. Another Monday indeed. But something was amiss and the sun was a bit thrown by the feeling. A familiar one, but a feeling it never really paid any attention to. But today, this Monday, the first day of spring, the sun simply could not avoid its unease.
“I have no shadow,” the sun said aloud to the passing clouds. “No shadow at all, and never have.” The clouds seemed to shrug. They themselves at times had plenty of shadows that shaped and made them beautiful. Shadows they shared by dropping them on the earth below. But the sun had none.
It spent the day ablaze with wondering “Why? What is this all about?” and seeing shadows everywhere.
It was as if God sensed the sun’s upset and caught it just before dusk on that Monday, the first day of spring.
“You are troubled,” God said to the sun. “Why? There’s really no need to be.”
“I have no shadow,” said the sun, “and I feel … foolish.”
“But you are a creature of light. You do not need a shadow. Don’t you know I’ve created you to let others have their own? Shadows add depth to their being, like the clouds.”
“But …”
“But,” God said, “you are pure light, like my angels. You and they have no need of shadows.”
“Are there shadows in heaven, then?” the sun asked.
God laughed, saying, “Only those that deepen heaven’s beauty. But on earth,” God continued, looking sad, “there are other shadows you have nothing to do with.”
“I don’t understand,” the sun said.
“The deeper shadows within humans who, from the very beginning and to this day want more than they need – more than I have given them, almost as if they want to be me.”
“But … you are God. No one can ever be you.”
God said, sadly, “Tell them that. My love keeps trying to help them find the purity of light I need them to be, but too many still don’t, won’t, can’t find that within themselves.”
“I know I am only the sun, that I would be nothing without your ‘Let there be …’ – is that what makes me a creature of light?”
God smiled. “All of my creatures are meant to be pure light – clarity, truth, images of me. But being human seems too often to get in the way. They cannot imagine or believe that in my kingdom light and love are, in a sense, air and water.
“That both are pure and shadowless, like you, my sun. It is why you are where you are. That they might see in you the power of my love.”
The sun fell silent as the dusk deepened, but managed to say to God, “I’m feeling a bit better about myself, thanks to the grace of your assurance. You’ve helped me appreciate the purity of my light and realize that there are shadows and there are shadows.”
God nodded, saying, “For now, yes. But light will overcome darkness eventually. Of course, you know that.”
The sun flared a smile and moved toward the horizon of the second day of spring, spilling a trail of golden light, its light, across the darkness of yesterday.
So dear to hear your voice again, Charles Wilkinson.