” The windows of my soul I throw wide open to the sun.” John Greenleaf Whittier.
I know that pain and suffering are one side of the coin of life,
thus accept them and grow through them,
whilst remaining vigilant to the joy and light within my heart,
and let them direct me.
© Bridget Cameron
Bridget Cameron 
Whittier’s statement is characteristically Quaker, opening yourself to the Light. It’s worth remembering that when this way of speaking began, dangerous, denying darkness was literally all around and outside daylight hours, light was obtained with some difficulty and at cost and risk. We find it easier to see the creativity and mystery in darkness because we have electric light. The threat to our inner silence, joy and openness comes more from noise and flashing lights than from fugitive darkness.
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I couldn’t agree more with you Ray regards your last statement, ” the threat to our inner silence, joy and openness comes more from noise and flashing lights than from fugitive darkness” as we need that silence and darkness to connect deeply.. I think the act of denying darkness began with the advent of monotheism with Akhnenaten (some argue that he and Moses were one and the same person, starting with Freud, and Ahmed Osman leads an interesting debate in his book Moses and Akhenaten, the secret history of Egypt at the time of the Exodus), with his heretic religion of light, and his overthrow of the many gods and goddesses of the Egyptian panthenon of Amen, in preference for the Aten, the Solar God. This advent with its denial of the soul’s journey through the night, caused a rift, which was later overthrown by the traditional Egyptian priests and army, thus Tutankhaten became Tutenhamun, and the old faith continued as usual. Then, later during the post Ptolemaic Roman Rule of Egypt ( first to 4th centuries AD), they debunked the gods and goddesses, overthrew their temples, burned down the library of Alexandria and introduced Christianity ( which was an extension of Judaism), which had similar undertones to what Akhenaten had introduced earlier, with his one God pantheon, yet the Amen( belief in multiple gods) remained, as in the Amen after the Lord’s prayer, interesting…. Some centuries later in the 7th century AD, Christianity divided, which later created Islam, as people were wanting a human prophet not an immortal one ( Christ’s resurrection, although there is no mention of this event in the Bible until in the 300’s AD, when it was introduced by the early Christian church Bishops with the holy trinity of the Father, son, and holy ghost, replacing the pagan virgin, mother and crone, during the First Council of Nicean 325), even though they believe in the prophet Jesus and much of early Islam was extremely similar to Christianity! I think any type of fundamentalism leads to harm, as the whole picture can never be seen, and continues to be fractured, leading to more dissension among those of similar faith. Ultimately, all paths lead to God/ess! 🙂
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