Like a moth attracted to the fire’s flame, so too am I attracted to life’s brilliant lights whenever or wherever they appear out of my darkness. Have you not noticed how your soul is profoundly nourished in response to an encounter with beauty…whatever its form or fashion? The light of our soul seems to send out S.O.S. messages to the corners and crevices of our private habitations in the universe…in an effort to connect our life’s love-light…with that of the others. All of us together and still alone…living as though lost in darkness, we search for the beauty of soul-light where ever we go. To exist in humanity, is to hunger and thirst for the rightness of beauty’s light.

There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. You long for the light but don’t know where to find it. But what if you are the light? What if you are the very agent of illumination that a dark situation begs for?

Elizabeth Gilbert

It seems to me, that as we inhabit our lives we find ourselves naturally attracted to and desireous of all things beautiful. Is it not the mother tongue of our inmost being? Beauty, when encountered in its many realms, produces a visceral, immediate reflexive inhale of AWE. And wonder of wonders, beauty is as beauty does. It exists without regard for preference or desire. It is the soul’s defining north star. It is the purest embodiment of truth that is not easily fathomed or defined. It is unadulterated, unmanifest perfection. When I consider how to become the best me I might be, I look to the beauty of nature, the beauty of true love, and the beauty of light shining itself strong into the darkness, and then I know; beauty’s truth draws me forward into the next right thing.

The main thing to know is that there are forces within us that want to enslave us to patterns of thinking, feeling, speaking

and behaving that lead us just about anywhere other than lives of goodness. Sometimes a person has to suffer, sometimes terribly, to choose not to let their inner Pharaoh ruin their lives any further. Some people, sadly, never learn.

Rabbi Mordecai Finley

So here I sit, on January 1, 2022, contemplating and wondering what this year holds for myself and all those in my little world. It is tempting to look and perceive a future full of more uncertainty and gloom. It is tempting to believe that our collective soul-lights are smoldering themselves into deeper night. And yet, when I think or feel these dark thoughts, I am reminded, rebuffed, and revived by the light of my own soul’s shining light. The answer to our darkness dwells in our very own presence. Our each and every source to beauty’s life force burns brightest when we decide to let it shine through our brokenness; our own broken thinking and ways of being. A soul’s light shines because it is designed to do so. And a soul’s beauty is shrouded only when it chooses to dis-believe in its own beauty. The soul, mine and yours, is beautiful simply because it IS!

So where is the light at the end of our collective tunnel? Is it possible for all of our dimming lights to shine bright, as one for all? May we then, each one decide, to choose, to remember and to act today, and every day hereafter, as though we are THE LIGHTS in the tunnels of dark! Let’s try, shall we…as we may not even have every one of the 365 opportunities ahead of us to perfect this work. May we agree to endeavor to become what we already are and let our soul’s beauty shine like never before? Shall we muster forward and shine like beautiful light-cutting sabers, slicing through the depths of despair, from our insides out? If each one of us could muster our courage, what a beautiful world we might create.

You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right–perhaps even the duty–to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.

Glennon Doyle