The Light In Each Of Us
It’s been said that better questions lead us naturally to better answers, and that it’s in not knowing that we open the doorway to knowing. I’m Scott Lennox and you’re listening to The Beautiful Question, a consideration of things that truly matter in a complex world.
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When was the last time you stopped to ponder what you’re really made of? Not just the skin and bones and blood cells and brain circuits, but what lies beneath all of that.
Join me this week as we pull the veil aside and consider something luminous and filled with hope.
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I recently shared with someone that one of my goals as a portrait photographer is to show the luminosity of my subjects, not just the light that’s touching them. It may seem an impossible goal, but it keeps me pondering the hidden nature of who and what we really are as human beings.
To set this week’s consideration into motion, I offer the following poem I wrote a few years ago about the nature of light and about our own nature as incandescent beings.
Enlightened
Without strain or struggle,
without trying to understand
or asking why or knowing how,
light speeds so effortlessly on its way
that we can scarcely imagine it.
A hundred and eighty-six thousand miles
in a single second.
It takes literally a finger snap
to travel from the moon to the Earth.
From the sun to the Earth,
eight minutes and a little more.
From the sun to Proxima Centauri,
the nearest star,
four years, give or take.
From the hypergiant star Canis Major
to where we are now—
can we even grasp this—
the light we see so clearly left that
mammoth twinkling speck
five thousand years ago.
To cross the Milky Way,
a hundred thousand years.
And from the Andromeda Galaxy,
once again to where we are right now,
a lightspeed journey of—listen—
two and a half million years,
a span of time and distance that is unfathomable
to our human awareness.
The light that is God’s luminous,
moving breath, completely unconstrained,
spans a hundred eighty-six thousand miles
every single second,
of every single minute,
of every single hour,
of every single day,
in every conceivable direction.
Surely, in all this incandescent vastness,
there is more than light enough
for us to see ourselves and one another
as we are,
to see our truest selves
and to clear away the obscurity just enough
to see the pure light
that is always resident within each of us.
Scott Lennox 2022
Fort Worth, Texas
(from Uncollected Poems by the author)
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Photo: Scott Lennox
When I say that we’re made of light, I’m not referring to the electromagnetic waves that can be detected by the human eye, or to some other principle of physics, but to the countless things that may be experienced whether they can be understood with the mind or not.
Here are just a few of them.
I think of the light in the eyes of those I love and care about, and the way our hearts grow lighter as our embrace deepens.
I think of the dazzling light in the eyes of a mother or father holding their newborn, and the ineffable light shining back at them from the baby’s face and eyes.
I think of the light radiating from the laughter or singing or happy conversations of people who are fully present and engaged with each other, or the irrepressible light in the sound of children who are playing with their imaginations fully intact.
Or consider the warm light of compassion that arises so effortlessly when we suspend judgment and are kind to one another.
Or the light that comes about when researchers ask the insightful questions that lead them to medical breakthroughs or surgical innovations, or the light of the creativity of artists and musicians and actors and dancers and writers and creatives of every kind.
I’m reminded of the elegant way one of my high school teachers helped me illuminate myself from the inside-out when he took the time to show me how my mind functions and how to work with it instead of constantly fighting myself.
And what about the quiet yet luminous exchanges that are taking place every day, all over the world, when innumerable volunteers spend their time feeding the homeless or giving them shelter or attending to their suffering.
And let’s not overlook the brilliance of doctors and nurses and hospital workers of very kind as they tirelessly tend to the sick or the dying.
Or the lovers who, as one poet has written, give each other the light of acceptance and honoring and devotion.
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You already know that I could go on and on and barely touch the surface of the light that is within us. It is truly unfathomable. So, I ask myself time and again what must happen for us to see the light, the pure and essential goodness, that has been embedded in us, which brings us to this week’s Beautiful Questions. I invite you to ponder them and see what comes to you.
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Question One: In what ways are you of aware of the light that is in you or that you have experienced?
Question Two: What light do you see in others?
Question Three: How might you become a bit more intentional about looking for the light in yourself and in those around you as you go through your days?
Write and tell me what you discover. It would delight me for you to share it with me.
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As I say each week,
My Light with Your Light!
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Thank you for joining me in these podcasts as we keep doing the things we can to respond to life in increasingly effective ways. As always, I’m open to your comments and feedback.
You can be further inspired by visiting my friends at Kosmos Journal. That’s K O S M O S Journal. Their mission is to inform, inspire, and engage global transformation in harmony with all life. You can easily find them online at Kosmos Journal dot O R G.
And at thebeautifulquestion.com, you can read the illustrated transcript of each podcast as you listen. You’ll also find an archive of all previous podcasts, including episodes three and four, guided relaxation audios that can help you practice letting go on a daily basis.
If you find these podcasts useful, don’t hesitate to share them or tell others about them. That’s a great way of helping me get a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement out into the world.
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I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
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The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced, and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.