As much radiance as shadow

The world spins as it spins.
Your life is on that same axis,
half shadow, half radiance
and turning, always turning.

-Maya Stein

There is as much radiance in my life as shadow.  I know that I lean towards the shadow, for lots of reasons, but in so doing I may give the impression that there is little radiance in my life.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  There are moments of overpowering sweetness in every single one of my days.  That bear?  Whit won him at Legoland.  His name is Lego.  Whit had to balance on a teetery ladder and climb up quite high.  The smile on his face when he won?  Beyond description.  The generosity Grace showed (she did not win) in celebrating her brother’s achievement?  Impossible to convey.  A million other flashes of radiance light my days.  There is no question about this, and I am sorry if I ever seem that this is not so; that makes me feel ungrateful, something I try very hard not to be.  I must do a better job capturing the endless light and joy that streams through my days; there is richness, too, in happiness, though it feels to me more slippery somehow.

Even – or maybe especially – the moments of radiant joy, though, are twined around some sadness.  That is just how I’m wired.  I can’t figure out the shape of the shadow, whether it is a faint rim around the happy experiences or a jagged grain at their center, but I am certain of its origin, which is about time’s passage.  The unavoidable reality that it can never come again haunts the edges of a moment even as I live it.  I am ever more certain that coming to terms with impermanence is the great challenge of my life.

I know that life is both an endless alleluia and a constant goodbye.  That the shadow and the radiance are a single axis along which my life spins.  Always turning.