Where is the Light?

January 2025

Waking around 6 AM on January 20, 2025, out my east facing window, the world is dark.  I don’t turn on any lights in the house, purposefully, so my eyes can adjust to the shades of dark.  One street light sheds a pale-yellow light. The shadow of a spruce tree stretches into the cul-de-sac.  It’s minus 20 below Fahrenheit and the skies are clear.  I don’t see the moon, but it must be around because there are fainter shadows from other trees on the thin layer of snow.  None of the evergreen or deciduous tree structures are in detail to my eyes, except the outline of the trunks.  No wind is blowing.   This is my quiet and prayer time.

My heart is heavy.  I worry about what is happening to the country and in the time in history in which I live.  I am aware that I should pray for the man who will be sworn in as president today.  With sarcasm, I agree he needs it.  I struggle to wish him well.  And I wonder how the culture in which I have grown, worked and raised children, condones him.

I watch the night turn to day.  It is so slow.  The details of the upper branches of the trees become visible first because of the sky lightening behind them.  The pale-yellow light of the lamppost still is brighter than the sky.  Gradually, the white of the snow on the ground becomes more prominent.  The shadow from the lamppost though, still reaches to the center of the cul-de-sac.  I walk to the kitchen in the dark house, to get coffee, and when I return to my seat at the east window, I see details of the evergreens and young-oak trees with hanging-on dried leaves.  A bit later the carpet in my living room has detail.  A few minutes more and the light of the sky, overshadows the pale-yellow of the lamppost, causing the evergreen shadow to disappear in the cul-de-sac.  The light now illuminates everything outside my window and declares the lamppost light insignificant. 

I am wearing black today.  I half-heartedly wish I could start a movement.  We all wear black until he is out of power.   I am grieving the loss an illusion.     My illusion has been that the USA is and will always be a beacon-a light of hope, a refuge for down trodden, a land of opportunity, a law-abiding people, a compassionate and generous people.   After all, that is what I was taught in school and heard from the leaders of my country, until now.  As an adult, I realize that my country has always been imperfect, my illusion has never been absolute truth.  But in a state of deepening gloom, I think things are different now.  This leader, he does not pretend to strive for virtuous things.   Instead, this leader chooses words and actions of which I am ashamed.  He pardon’s January 6^th rioters and violence perpetrators, perpetuates the lie that he won the 2020 election, cancels diversity programs, excludes LBGTQ as people in the government, states that Greenland and Canada should become the newest states, declares the GULF of Mexico The Gulf of America.  This uncompassionate, vain-glorious stance that the leader of my government proclaims is not how I want my country to be. 

I believe that daylight will prevail over the deepening darkness and gloom; just as the lamppost light feels like the only source of light at night but becomes insignificant when the sun has risen.   I want to concentrate on the light, not the gloom, not the darkness, not the “dim-light”.    I want to commit to recognizing day-light in every day.  And, I want to look for opportunities to be day-light that may encourage others in their day. 

Lord, Light in my life, help me.