The light dominates but doesn’t reach far enough.  It’s the first thing a newborn sees.

Light gives us color and shadows – penetrates and reveals. 

There are things that hide from the light. Cockroaches of feelings and thoughts that if brought out might destroy us.  These stay in the shadows bearing witness but silent.  Sometimes rustling so we don’t forget.  A haunting of sorts.

The others reveal themselves – prisms and golden archways to the past, to the future. Sunbeams of insight as understanding dawns.

Should we bring those shadow dwellers into the light?  Would it destroy them or us?  Or are we just repulsed?  Is the unexamined life not worth living? Do we need to get the magnifying glass out for all the firings of our synapses?  Should every memory be put under a microscope?  Backlit and magnified? A hundred times? A thousand?

The cool stone of now, just now, is seductive.  A balm for the mind. Some of us actively seek it trying to escape just for a moment, a few minutes, the clamor of thoughts and scuttling of shadow memories.  Seeking silence and stillness.’

Now is sanctuary.  An absence of worry and fear.  Here.  Just here.  Now.  Breathing.  The light not penetrating.  The slate clean.  A return to the womb where we don’t remember, don’t think, where we only have the nurturing of now.  The peace of it. Protected from the onslaught of the light and things that scuttle in the shadows. 

Cloistered.

Peace be with you.