The last few weeks, the sun was always just setting when I got off of swim on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I would come over the hill and park, watch the sun sink across the little harbor, the sky a million shades of red and orange and fuschia, and I would be totally overwhelmed, completely overcome, by the intense beauty. More often than not, I found myself crying, and I drove home feeling emptied of myself, as though this glimpse of glory had scattered pieces of my soul in the wind, and I had to struggle to reassemble it.
Daylight Savings Time wrecked my little ritual - the sun is still high on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and on Mondays and Wednesdays I have Maggie and Ruth with me - and I've been missing it.
I don't have a good sunset view from my place. My parents' house blocks the way, and most of my windows face the meadow opposite the sunset. The past few days have been warm(er), my windows have opened, and I've come home from work and watched the light change across the field. The grasses change from hues of brown-green, to grey with the palest tint of lavender. The shadows in the forest just beyond darken and stretch. The leaves rustle as the night winds begin their caress. By the time the darkness has married ground and sky, I am left feeling quiet, at rest, emptied of everything but the essential essence of myself, everything blown away but my solid, unmoveable core.
I have come to realize that I need both - the sunsets and the changing light. The thing that scatters me in all directions and makes me question who I am, and the thing that grounds me like an anchor. The overwhelmingly new, the comforting old. All of it. I am made and unmade. Born and reborn. And in each iteration I find another face of God, some nuance I had missed in the last dim mirror.
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