...the dark light

We travelers, walking to the sun, can't see
Ahead, but looking back the very light
That blinded us shows us the way we came,
Along which blessings now appear, risen
As if from sightlessness to sight, and we,
By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward 
The blessed light that yet to us is dark.
---Wendell Berry, 1999

I was sun-blind. Could not see anything ahead, not road, nor obstacle, nor turn. Unsure of what step to take next, whether to step at all, paralyzed with the blind fear of it.

Then I looked back. Not a long look, a stare. Not a longing gaze, cast with an eye to return. Just a look. And that look made me sure again---it reassured me.

Even when light hid light from my clear view, I was being led, guided; a path was being made. So, though I did not see, I stepped into the light.

It had led me before.

...before I move on from here

Do you hear my plea, Mystery,
does my cry turn your head?
Notice my weeping, do not
sit silent and aloof.
For I am a sojourner,
a gypsy, a rambler,
like all my people before me.
Do not pierce me with your gaze,
let relief flood my features,
before I move on from here.
---Psalm 39:12-13 (para. laca)

There have been times, I am sure, when we have all felt like flying under the radar; when going unnoticed would have been a good thing. There may be times we want to blend in, or times when what we were doing was distinctly un-noteworthy (sometimes being noticed would have been the worst thing!).

In these verses, though, I feel the psalmist's yearning for God to notice, to really see, the person in the crowd. Begging for God to hear, to turn, to soften to the suffering of the alien in this land of belong-ers.  Not as one of the crowd, although maybe that, too. But See me, God. Individually. Equally. Valuably.

Mark my passing through. See me.