Illuminating Shadow

When I was in third grade, the school bully lived in my neighborhood. I didn’t know that when I saw him standing on top of the jungle gym on the playground with his arms outstretched in a victory V. He was bigger than the other boys in my class. He didn’t fit in, and he evoked a complex mixture of emotions in me: fear, awe, anxiety, confused compassion.

I learned that our backyards adjoined at the corners, separated by two rows of bushes that grew together at the top, making for a not-so-secret cave-fort beneath them. One day he spied me hanging out in the fort and invited me over to swing. I loved to swing, and we didn’t have a swing set. Whatever reservations I had about him were quickly tamped down by my desire to have fun, and I crossed the threshold into his backyard. We didn’t say much to each other, and I don’t remember ever going there again. 

During this season of celebrating light, we look more deeply into the heart of darkness, the shadows, and we seek illumination. The distribution of it, like so much, is inequitable and inconsistent. Abuse and injustice, illness and loss, poverty and violence—all of that and more–can cause the most vital light, that which flames within, to be dimmed. Those of us who have received, and continue to receive more light, are called upon to kindle embers that threaten to become ash, including our own.

The bully was a foster child . We were both broken in our different ways. He was kind to me and my brothers. We saw the light in him that our classmates didn’t. Forever after that time I soared on a swing in his backyard, I saw him as a protector, a light bearer rather than someone in shadow.

The play of light and shadow is not seasonal, but the lighting of candles and festivals of light all around the world this time of year bring what we anticipate and long for–beauty, joy and hope–reflecting what flames within and wants to shine so brilliantly, illuminating shadow, magnifying light.