Candle in the Shadow

I just came across this old favorite again:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we consciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Nelson Mandela 1994 Inaugural Speech

Since the election results came in, I’ve been feeling a bit depressed, sort of closed in and full of anxiety for what the next four years will bring. But beneath it, I feel a ribbon of hope. It’s a hope borne of determination not to succumb to that fear. A hope for the strength and power that comes from being “a child of God.”

Mandela’s quote helps me remember that this strength and power lives within me. It’s that connection with the Divine. It’s that joyful, playful spirit that dances inside this body.

We are already free. We always have been. And what better time to celebrate our beauty than now?

I will not lend strength to the troubles of our country by naming them directly. I imagine that anyone connected with the spirit of Life can feel the same potential for sadness that I feel, and for the same reasons.

I’ll say instead that with the changes our country currently undergoes, we who have a commitment to Spirit, who see beneath the structures and patterns of our society, who understand the nature of this world and the next, have an opportunity. This is the time to be Ourselves. Our True Selves. Unmasked. Uninhibited. Unbridled. Full of all the joy and hope and peace and love and beauty and truth of life itself.

This is our time to “make manifest the glory of God that is within us” and to live that glory in our daily actions.

This would be our path in any age. But I feel that in the context of all that is Not, we can give greater strength to all that Is. For the next several years, we’ll have even greater opportunity to see the power of this connection to the sacred.

It’s not my place to label good and evil. I feel we all start out the same and discover our version of reality in large part because of the context of our environment. Even so, I feel that this is my time to be a candle in the shadow.

I’ve been late getting started. Now’s the time to do the work of a Higher Purpose.