So, the lesson this week is all about light - or more correctly it’s about the spiritual meaning of light, “O send out thy light and they truth; let them lead me;..”. I’ve just been through a day of all light and no darkness. I boarded a plane yesterday morning, and as I headed west for China the sun didn’t set for 24 hours. Sure we were supposed to close our shades at one point and try to simulate ‘night’, but I wouldn’t abide by the darkness and opened my window so I could see Alaska and the deep blue Pacific slipping by.
At one point I was looking down on a sea of clouds and thought a lot about how even though it must be cloudy on the surface - that being 10,000 feet in the air allowed me to see that it was really a sunny day - and that anybody could see this if they were just elevated high enough to look at the day with a new perspective. We kept flying and were soon at 30,000 feet.
Now that I’m in China I should probably set the scene. I don’t want to write this whole thing about my personal details, but there are a few facts that I should probably share. Briefly they are: (1) I am in Shanghai now and will shortly be taking a train out to western Qinghai province where I will volunteer for a month with an NGO (Non Government Organization) before returning to my job in Boston (2) My brother and sister are also here and, in addition to being the ones who arranged the volunteering with this NGO, have been here for several weeks.
Early this morning, people outside decided it was finally time to start being loud again. In the alley below me I could hear a Chinese radio announcer joyfully rattling off the news and some constant shovelling and hacking that sounded only slightly more like construction then demolition. There is a lot of both of those in this neighborhood.
So far there have been a bunch of times where I need to humanly get out of the way. Whether it was talking with the people who knew where my bag was (yesterday Tokyo, and today I believe it will fly to Qinghai and get there before me), or trying to understand people on the street who so earnestly want me to understand them. This morning I came across this quote from Mary Baker Eddy (I’m not just quoting for the sake of it, this thing actually helped me). It goes,
The individual is the best healer who asserts himself the least, and thus becomes a transparency for the divine Mind, who is the only physician; the divine Mind is the scientific healer.
I like the idea of being transparent to God’s light and I’ll keep that with me as I go get ready to take a 33 hour train ride. Now.For more photos from Brant’s trip check out his BubbleShare.