I sat above the limestone rocks, so like those in the Pedernales River. Water flowed over them and down, from one pool to the next. The sun filtered through trees beyond, and I watched light dance on water, hypnotic beauty. A shaft of light through the cleft of a tree, then the cleft caught the sun as the earth made its gradual motion. A ring of suns, of fire diamonds, each a broken sun, appeared in water flowing over rock. I gazed struck still by the sight.

Like God, the sun cannot be studied directly. It must be broken and reflected for our human eyes to watch without being dazzled and blinded. Even then, after a few minutes, my eyes ached from the light and moved toward the diffuse gentle reflection of bright sky across the water of the pool, more peacefully beautiful than the circle of circles of fire diamonds.

In order to see God, to be able to experience God, we look at the broken reflections in others, in the red of a cardinal, the cool face of a mountain cliff, the infinity of stars, desire so to be one with what we experience, so unaware that we are already of the whole, already joined with that we yearn for.

As the earth turned, the sun was whole again, and no longer broken into a form I could safely observe.



(This from last August.)