What You May Not Know You’re Telling Us

Photo: Chad Cooper, Creative Commons, cc license

Photo: Yen-Cheng Li, Creative Commons, cc license

When I peered out last night, they caught me by surprise. Standing crowded together, they stared to the right, fascinated by something in the west. I laughed and wondered what I was missing; and how did they know to all turn and watch?

In the jumbled garden beds, a crowd of sunflowers stands tall in a jungle of weeds. Strays from last year’s structured vegetable gardens, the sunflowers are not yet fully grown. Their flowered faces are small, more like sleepy full-lashed cyclops, and last night they stood in silent vigil after a setting sun.

I laughed yesterday at the sight of them. This morning, I stepped out to study them again. In perfect precision, they had changed during the night, and now they all faced east. Heavy-lidded tiny eyes following the light. Yesterday, peering into evening’s twilight, they remained still, staring at where they had last seen the sun’s face. Waiting, quiet in the night, they stood. Until this morning, and how do they know? These stray wild flowers on a cloudy grey morning, how do they see the sun’s face when I have yet to? How do they know to turn to the light, to turn to the place where they know they’ll see his face? How do they know to wait? 

And I see that in you, and in other dear friends, this ability to follow the Light. I see you, standing… some in meticulously-ordered sites and the watching for the sun is easy, ordered, expected. You know where he’ll appear because he did yesterday and the day before, and you stand and you wait, knowing the light will come. Other friends, we’ve talked, and you share it raw and honest over coffee cups or cyber space that the waiting is hard, this life is jumbled, disordered, and not as structured as you had planned. The days are cloudy, and you don’t quite see his face yet, but you remember where you saw him last and so you stare and wait, convinced that since you saw him here last, this is where you’ll wait, watching, until you see him again.

The sunflowers amaze and delight me, moving me to laughter and joy on a day with both grey thunderous rain and splashing sunlight. I watch the way they follow him, the way they follow the light despite the changing weather. Their faces keep time with the movements of the sun and their eyes never waver, following his light.

I see it in you, friends, in the times we’ve talked. And for others of you whom I’m still getting to know, I can sense it. That others see this in you too. How your face hovers waiting, and how your very being turns towards Him, and points me in His direction too. You point us to His light, my friends.