It is the pattern of life, Dark to Light

​Shortly after sunset last night, my Facebook feed became flooded with pictures of the northern lights. Many of them from neighbors.

I quickly got up from my chair, went outside, looked up to the sky, and witnessed nothing like I was witnessing online.

So I returned to online.

In short order, I didn't feel disappointed. Breath-taking pictures were being loaded by the hundreds, from all over the country, and the narratives friends were adding made it possible to share in their joy, in their reflections, in their excitement. For a moment, with a little imagination, it felt like I was sitting on a shore in Iceland with a few hundred friends, gasping together.

Some Native American tribes believe the lights are the spirits of their ancestors dancing. The stories they tell reflect a deep reverence for the lights as a symbol of hope, of connection between earthly struggles and spiritual realities.

It was not lost on me, as the pictures scrolled by, that these same skies delighting and aweing so many of my friends are the same skies that have unleashed havoc and destruction around the country the last two weeks. The same skies now being filmed for their beauty are the same skies many have had to run from.

It is the nature of life. In the end there is no running from it. No pretending the pattern doesn't exist. It is struggle that gives birth to beauty. It is darkness that gives birth to light. It is a cross that gives birth to life everlasting.

The auroras rarely make it to the skies of Virginia. Or to Kentucky or North Carolina. Or to many of the places from which my friends were celebrating them last night.

In their own back yards.

As if receiving a gift. Or maybe a reminder.

That even in the darkest places, there is beauty.

That even when life feels like it is at its lowest, if we'll look up, way up, we might discover unexpected beauty has come our way.

For it is the nature of life. There's no running from it. No pretending the pattern doesn't exist.

It is darkness that gives birth to life.