Embraced by the light

I’ve still been thinking about that idea of all-encompassing light that I blogged about the other day, and wondering about how that would feel – to be so embraced by light. Perhaps this is trying to put a spiritual concept into physical terms, but it seems to me that this light would be the sum total of all the wonderful qualities that God is: good, love, joy, vitality, trust, wisdom, etc. Certainly there would be some response that we’d feel to that. Peace, the feeling of being so loved, warmth, and bliss are some that spring to my thought. Just an overwhelming sense of being in harmony with everything and so loved – and so able to love.

Have you seen the TV show “Saving Grace”? I think it is on TNT and was new this summer. I wasn’t going to watch it, but somehow ended up catching an episode, and then another, and soon was hooked. Anyway, in this show, Grace (played by Holly Hunter) is an Oklahoma City police detective who leads a pretty wild lifestyle. Not a strong moral compass and that doesn’t bother her. She is fiercely loyal to her friends and at least some of her family. She is also agnostic at best, perhaps atheist. One evening, after a pretty rough day and some heavy drinking and partying, she is driving home, way over the speed limit, hits a man walking along the side of the road, and crashes her car into a speed limit sign.

After trying to resuscitate him unsuccessfully, she prays, “Oh, God, please help me.” And that’s when Earl enters her life. Earl looks like an Earl, a bit rough looking, perhaps a biker, flannel shirt and jeans, but the thing is Earl’s an angel. Certainly not what most of us would expect to see when an angel came in answer to our prayer! ;-) But what would Grace expect (if anything)? Certainly Earl appears like the type of person she already relates to, would be comfortable with, in everyday life.

Well, Grace being pretty much a “non-believer,” Earl had some proving to do, and this is where light started to come in. And of course this involves angel wings – and boy does he have wings! Large, bright white and glowing. And when he envelopes Grace in those wings, or more correctly, the light from those wings, it’s like she melts. You can just see this amazing sense of peace, intense joy, pure happiness and love wash over the woman, and she absolutely basks in this feeling. Maybe this is a glimpse of how that light of God in that city at the top of the hill feels. (BTW, the man Grace hit is immediately healed – and gone – and her car and the road sign are unscratched.)

So do we need Earl to come along and spread his wings to feel the impact of God’s light? I think we have our Earls and that we have these moments (hopefully we all do!) and we get these glimpses in our lives. We get them when that special someone gives us a hug, when a friend says or does just the right thing at the right moment, when we are engrossed in a piece of beautiful music or art, when a physical or emotional ill is healed. Think what it will be like when we get to the top of that hill and experience that light full-time. Who wouldn’t want that or to do what it takes to get there?

The allegory in Miscellaneous Writings gives some examples on what prevents people from even trying, perhaps even noticing that light and the path to it, and hints at the dangers that challenge us along the way as we struggle to that city “four-square.” And I think Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy is a great guidebook to help us along the way, to help us overcome those roadside dangers and pitfalls, and to enable us to reach that holy city filled with the light of God.