The Light in the Darkness Disappeared.

As I was leaving the car this morning there was a certain light that captured and covered me. You may not understand the radiance that touched me just then as I try to explain it in these paragraphs but still I will try.

Last night powerful storms raced through this northern land. Together my family and I kept flipping between the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals 2013 and The Weather Channel. As the Blackhawks went into the middle part of the first overtime the meteorologists implied the storms would swing just south of us and we went to bed.

Getting from being ensconced in front of the TV to a prone position in bed was not as easy as I had hoped. Something happened yesterday to my youngest son and it was something social. As he stripped down to go to sleep was quite distraught. His disquiet was a vague and nebulous kind of upset. As a result there were long quiet conversations between he and I and then between he and his mother.

Best I could tell was that Secundus was feeling marginalized in his social circle. Summoning up the core of my experience I told him that he should focus on his heart and mind first and then play the world’s games. I urged him to grow mentally, read, observe, think and then talk. I told him to value his own experience. As an aside I told him there were only a handful of people from high school I would walk across the street to talk to and that college let me find the people who shared my visions of life, and who really changed my visions of life. Mom offered Mom comfort, usually something 100% better than Dad thoughts.

Lying in bed after that emotional thunderhead I heard first the distant booming of thunder and then loud, loud crashing of thunder that rolled on and on and on. It poured and raged last night. It was a once in a summer event or so the weather geeks had said before I went to bed. I woke up a couple of times in the night to the rage of the elements.

As I rode in to work today I listened to the reports of damages from the storm and road closures due to flooding. In the moment I was getting out of my car the sky split between dark grey clouds and bright radiant sunlight. The breeze was cooling and the light was odd. If you have every seen the light during an eclipse it looked a great deal like that. The brightness of the light was tempered with a cold steely edge. It is a light that sometimes accompanies rainbows but alas there was none of those promises of hope anywhere.

Quickly I rummaged through my bag to find my trusty iPhone 4s but I was not fast enough and the moment of this special light was gone with the clouds that were moving east. I may not see that light again for a month or a year. Who knows I may never see it again. But the cold steel infused light I saw today like some many things I experience in my life was a little marvel of existence that I will savor.