Let Your Light Shine
A thoughtful question sparks delightful conversation.
Kindled this way, conversation can burn for hours.
Even when things cool down, a smoldering of thought is often glowing beneath…
What’s the difference between who you are and what you do?
Is fibbing alright if it’s to preserve someone’s feelings?
Where do you think beauty comes from?
Do you have a favorite thoughtful question?
I’d really like to hear it.
Have you ever watched a candle burn?
Smaller than a cigarette and spiraled with pink or blue, birthday candles are my favorite.
Poked into snow white frosting and crowned with an orange flame.
We serenade the drops oozing down the stem, molten paraffin usually splashing onto the sweet plaster before the last “…to you.”
Most icing tastes waxy because we have this silly habit of melting wax on it before we eat it…
Larger than a cigar and gently white, fancy dinner candles are also nice.
Mated with a polished silver holder, rising eight inches over the table cloth the wick holds a tiny sun while evening, food and conversation revolve.
Pressing its orange glow into inky space the yellow outer flame dances with the night.
Dark becomes light by traveling an imperceptible transition to the center.
Burning white and clear at the same time, at the center.
Pure and still. Bright and invisible.
Here’s another thought full of wonderment…
The Center is a point. You can miss it in every direction.
Mr. Frost put it this way…
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
I’m guessing he spent some time staring at candles.
What is something your children have taught you that you never anticipated learning?
Flames from a soldier’s torch rolled across the porch and lapped at the pineboard siding.
Another house nearby was already swallowed in a blaze of heat and light.
April 26, 1777. The British were coming.
Leaping astride the family horse, one brave patriot galloped into the night.
There was no moon that night, torrents spilled from the sky and the roads turned to rivers.
Soaking in the saddle, flying from farm to farm, pounding from door to door and shouting in the streets, one rider raised the alarm.
“The British are coming!”
Before morning sunbeams began to stab at the sky, Sybil Ludington had loped over 40 miles and roused over 400 militiamen.
She was 16 years old.
Later, the two armies tangled at the Battle of Ridgefield.
The Redcoats retreated and we rankled them all the way to the sea.
Cool, right?
“But why hasn’t Sybil’s story been more regaled?” you ask?
Great question. Also, you sound very sophisticated, using a word like “regaled.”
One historian’s theory suggests Sybil’s story isn’t especially Revered because maybe it never happened.
That’s right. Maybe 16 year-old Sybil never rode all night in a rainstorm.
Huh. Do you suddenly feel a bit sad? I did too…
Why do we really want this heroic tale to be true?
This is a little embarrassing and you’ll probably think I’m crazy, but…
I’ve decided to believe Sybil really did save the day by riding that night.
I know, I know. I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that she did. But I still believe.
You see, when I think about what she did, I stand a bit straighter.
My problems seem lighter and the day gets brighter.
If she did something that courageous, maybe you and I can too.
That’s what a story can do.
Do you know any other stories that are too good not to be true?
Some folks like to sing and dance, “Perception is reality!”
Others, often less musical, say, “Hey Flowers, facts don’t care about your feelings. Reality is reality.”
Who has it right?
The answer might be in your refrigerator…
When you pop open the door, a light blinks on.
Actuated by a mechanical switch, the bulb that brightens your butter is only bright when the door is open.
Right?
Is your lettuce lamp on or off right now?
Sometimes switches break. If your fridge flood was lit when the door was sealed, how would you know?
We need to crack the door to see if the beam is burning or black.
Swinging the door moves the switch, which may bump the light, on or off.
We can’t check without changing things.
This is what science people like to call the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
(Awesome name, btw. It sounds way better than saying “we have no idea what’s going on.”)
Best we can tell, the very act of measuring a physical reality causes that reality to change.
And by “we” I mean this cool guy at MIT.
Professor Adams uses just a few boxes and four simple experiments to make his point.
The results?
Logic cracks like a Stone Table…
Following “the rules?” Apparently, Quantum Mechanics didn’t get the memo…
Electrons are doing everything except what they’re supposed to do.
Protons are everywhere except where they’re supposed to be.
Everything is anything – until we try to define it. Then things becomes relatively real.
i.e. A thing defines itself relative to the way we approached it.
I call it the Theory of Specific Relativity…
Right now, if you’re like me, your brain is white-knuckling the lap bar on this roller coaster of thought.
Some of you, brighter than me, have always known this.
Only a brightly burning heart can know something this big…
“Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your being. When your eye is good, you are filled with light. But when your eye is bad, your whole being is filled with darkness.”
The way we look at something changes what a thing is, in a way.
Phew, the ride’s almost over. We’re nearly back to where we started…
Perception or Fact?
Subjective or Objective?
Color or B&W?
Music or Math?
Heart or Mind?
Which one defines “reality?”
The way you ask the question might change the way you are answered.