Communion in a Parking Lot Date Friday, April 26, 2024 - 07:40 PM PST Topic Religion One of the better consequences of throwing your sleeping schedule completely out of whack is that you get to experience the day in different ways than you have been used to. I've decided that it is more than just the light that changes at different points during the day; the vibe changes entirely. The light has a different quality, the air has a different quality, and my thoughts have a different quality. I really shouldn't be surprised by that. On a subatomic level, I, like everything around me, am just an expression of energy as mass. It stands to reason that if the quality of the energy of the day shifts (of which I am convinced) then my brain waves (more energy) should follow suit. The energy of the earliest part of the day is the most serene for me. The time shortly after sunrise has an energy that is particularly meditative for me. It is a time in which I am far more comfortable thinking than speaking. Breakfast may or may not be the most important meal of the day, but it is certainly the most symbolically charged. I break my fast because I need to revitalise myself. I need new energy just as the sun revitalises the world around me by introducing new energy into the atmosphere. This became very clear to me this particular morning. Shortly after sunrise, I went outside to enjoy what was shaping up to be one of the nicest days in recent memory. The sky was clear and no longer the colour of lead. The temperature was forecast to rise a bit above the freezing mark. In winter, one should not take days like this for granted and I was determined to enjoy it while I was able. So I stood for over an hour in a snow and ice filled parking lot as the sun crept slowly up the sky. By and by, I began to notice things. The point at which the temperature warmed to melt the snow and ice occured in an odd, piecemeal fashion... it was fascinating to watch and to be a part of. It did not happen all at once, but in tiny fits and starts all around me. The water became liquid slowly and sluggishly and reached out like tiny, exploring fingers as it was vitalized by the energy that the sun imparted to it. As the tiny, groping rivulets encountered more ice and snow a strange thing happened. Either the rivulet was warm enough to thaw the ice, or the ice was cold enough to freeze the stream. If it was directly in the sun, the stream generally won this contest, but if it was in a shadow, the victory tended to go to the ice. Tiny micro-environments of freezing and thawing were competing all around me, and I was a part of the contest as well. I cast a shadow, and as I moved around to watch one tiny battle, I inadvertantly determined the outcome of another going on behind me. My warmth and my coolness were, for the space of about an hour, as dynamic as the sun in the eternal contest between fire and ice. As I said before, we are all of us energy expressing itself as matter. On a quantum level, we are all of us no different than the tangible energy of rocks and trees and ice and air, or the intangible energy of the sunlight that makes life possible in the first place. I was privileged this morning to experience the incredible difference that the addition of a little solar energy makes to the energy of the world of matter, but these miracles are going on all of the time. They have to be; if the inexpressably profound miracle of existence were not going on at every moment, nothing could be there to be noticed at all. Perhaps the energy of the morning, flowing through the path of least resistance, helps me to be appreciative. The energy that is everything might all be the same, but the pathways that it travels shift. There is no quantitative difference in the evening or afternoon, but for some reason it is the light of the morning that helps me to realise that I am, I was, I will be... a part of everything. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=483