Let it Shine

When I was a young teen, I had a picture of Mary, mother of Jesus, taped inside a tiny closet in my room and I used to pray to her regularly. Perhaps that’s not such a strange concept for a Catholic – but I was from Jewish-Quaker parents and had no religious education at all! I think what appealed to me is that Mary represented not just a loving mother, but a kind and patient loving mother. The mother I wish I had had, the mother I try to be. But it also had to do with the light that both suffused her inwardly and emanated from her outwardly.

The image of the sacred heart, a heart glowing with the light of a passionate fire, breaking through the boundaries of pain and thorns, is a powerful one that appeals to me greatly. It tells me that no matter how much one might suffer – and, with the death of her child, Mary certainly suffered – divine light and love can be at our very core and radiate throughout and beyond our bodies to share with others. There’s a Buddhist meditation, the Metta Sutra that is very similar to this idea. Even with the recognition that life is suffering, it suggests that we should try to love each creature in the world – all people, plants, animals, and insects – all sentient beings, as if we were their mother and they were our child, our only child. To practice that in meditation is to extend that loving light throughout and beyond our bodies. The effect of feeling this light from within that radiates without has been described quite beautifully by three very different people from very different viewpoints.

Hildegard of Bringen was a most remarkable woman in 12th century Germany. She was the founder and abbotess – head honcho -- of a number of nunneries. She was also a composer of beautiful liturgical music, an expert on and author of botanical and medical knowledge, a theologian and a visionary, as well as a lecturer and healer. Her correspondence with the Pope and leaders of her times illustrate both her brilliance and their appreciation of her counsel. Hildegard refers to what she calls “the Living Light” as the source of all her visions, her creativity, her healing powers, her life. And this ‘Living Light’ – which she saw as coming from God -- gave her sustenance, courage, and strength. At one point she wrote: “The Living Light…while I am contemplating it, all my sadness and all pain are taken from my memory so that then I act like an unaffected girl and not an old woman.”
I saw this in action one day when I was in the Behavioural Health unit of the hospital in which I was doing chaplaincy work. An older Nigerian woman, tormented by the mental illness demons in her life, sat in our group both quite agitated and morose. But then she asked if she could sing a song she’d composed about God. As she sang, and as she became more spirited, our group watched her face transfix from worn-down pain to uplifted joy. Like Hildegard of Bringen 900 years before her, The Living Light took away her sadness and pain and she looked like a young “unaffected girl and not like an old woman.”

Another person who describes this inner, divine light is a professor I heard speak at the American Academy of Religion in 2013. As well as being a tenured professor of religious studies at a prestigious university in Texas, he is a practitioner of the Santo Daime religious tradition which originated in the Amazon of Brazil. In describing his personal religious experiences he said:

"I am deeply grateful for having the opportunity to be immersed in
divine light… I’m left with a subtle (or not so subtle) awareness of
a heart that is more open than it once was; of spiritual eyes that are
more attuned to the divine Beauty that shines through the leaves of
trees as they are blown by the wind; of an increasing sense of compassion
for the suffering that this world is undergoing; and of a deepening ability
to rest in the soft glow of divine presence in the midst of everyday life.”
(G. William Barnard, “Enthogens in a Religious Context: The Case of the Santo
Daime Religious Tradition,” AAR, Nov 2013.)

Author/educator/therapist Michael Gurian, in his book The Soul of the Child: Nurturing the Divine Identity of Our Children. reminds us that what makes us alive is the electromagnetism of our brains, our heart and our bodies and that electromagnetism is just another form of light.

“The science of neurochemistry shows us that the human being, like all
living things, is only alive in relation to the electrical energy – the
light – it organizes… the very neurochemistry of human life is electrical
– a spark, a flow of light… whether a galvanic skin response test is
administered to our bodies, or an EKG to our heart rate, or a PET scan
to our brain waves, or a series of monitors to a mother’s full uterus,
all will measure that light.”
(Michael Gurian, The Soul of the Child, p. 20-21.)

He goes on to suggest what every religion has also taught: that through the love and attachment we receive from others, particularly from our family, our love light grows and develops. Studies have shown that when a mother enters a room and coos lovingly to her child, the child’s brain lights up. And that light suffusing our brain and our body, Gurian identifies as our soul.


How similar that idea is to the artists and writers of every religion who show the holy, saintly people of their tradition with a halo or aura surrounding their body. Moses came down from the mountain and his face was gleaming. Jesus was transfigured in radiant light on the mountain. Rays of light emenate from the bodies on Buddhist bodhisttvas. Or the Hindu god Krishna who is seen as a "blaze of splendor...so radiant You are glowing like the blazing fire, brilliant as the sun...Your face beaming with the fire of sacrifice, flooding the whole universe with light." (The Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 11) That inner, spiritual, electromagnetic light of their love and their experience is so great, that it extends beyond their skin and radiates for all of us to see and feel.

It reminds me of the sentiment in the song identified with the civil rights struggle in this country, “This Little Light of Mine, I’m going to let it shine… Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”

But I'm also aware of this divine light in the heart and the body as I do meditations to cure my cancer. Meditator after meditator extols me to let the light in, to shine it on the cancer cells, and to bring a sense of peace and wholeness through this divine light wash. It seems to be working -- at at least I feel great when I do it.

May the healing power of the Living light, that comes from beyond us yet permeates the very core of us, give us strength and guidance. May it help us to remember that even on those most dark and dismal moments of our lives, we can draw upon the light, and allow it to infuse us, allow it to radiate beyond us, and, with the kindness and patience of Mary, allow us to share the light and love with all sentient beings. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine!