Well, here we are in March. One of the blessings of an academic schedule is that little thing called “spring break,” and I’m just back from mine. This year, I took my books and my computer and created a little writing space for myself at another location than my home desk. I made some progress on my larger project, but not as much as hoped. I was distracted by a little piece of understanding and a great big picture window…here are a few words about that.
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And now, for a little subversive talk…
Early to bed, early to rise…
Those are the words my mother used to justify my early bedtime hour when I was a child. And those words have marked me to this very day. Even on “vacation,” sleeping in late means rising with the sun and that one irritating bird who thinks they are an alarm clock for the world. I know. Every place has one.
By the way, in case you don’t know the phrase, the conclusion is: “makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” I know. Patriarchy. Blame Benjamin Franklin.
Each morning on my writing retreat, I rose at the hour my body expected to plant feet on the floor, at 6:00 a.m. Each morning, I had been treated a spectacular sunrise, that kind of sunrise that floods the room with all the colors and yet prevents you from doing anything other than look at the sunrise. The last morning, I was convinced that there would be nothing to see in those wee dark hours because of impending weather, but I was wrong. Not only was there something to see, but there was something to learn.
As I made my tea and burned my toast, I looked out towards the water as I had done each day. Seeing the faintest line of color on the horizon, I surrendered. I simply took a seat to watch the transformation. And with the tick of each passing minute, I realized that my surrender would not be disappointed on this, my last day. I sat back and watched Nature’s most subversive act, the transformation night into day before my very eyes.
I’ve been working on my definition of subversiveness for a long time and I have to say that I have never before had the chance to observe so clearly that quality of being in action. For some, subversiveness is a word synonymous with stealth, or sneakiness. There is some truth in that definition, particularly when it takes you by surprise. I, however, am one of those who likes to go back to the original root of a word for its meaning. I like to look its origins, to see its journey through our lives and the lives of our language ancestors. And this word, subversive, comes to us through Middle English and Old French, directly from the Latin root, subverto. It means, literally, to overturn from beneath.
In my little chair, mug in hand, bathed in colors that simply can’t be pulled from a box of crayons or paints, colors that only nature makes for an instant each day, all I could think is this: this is the true enactment of that first meaning of subversiveness. The sun, the light, which is always there, literally comes from beneath and overturns the darkness. This is what I have called my “subversive light,” a kind of light that sneaks up on you, overtakes you, envelopes you, turns you upside down, and then becomes one you as you face the day ahead. This kind of light represents change in its most concentrated form. And yet, here, if you pay attention, you can see it coming.
When I’m talking about subversive light, my friends, that is the kind of subversiveness I am talking about, the kind where an idea or a belief system or a behavior pattern or yes, even a system or an institution, is overturned or transformed by something from underneath, something that is always there but unseen, that ever-present action of something that runs like a current beneath all of life. Call that something the great Unconscious, call it God, or give it another name, it is something that works in our lives and our world even when we do not see it or name it.
Kind of like a sunrise over the horizon. When I had the luxury of sitting, and watching the coming of the light unfold before me, I started to understand with more than my head. Light is to me the greatest metaphor here, because light creates change but does not need to harm. It comes seemingly both slowly and quickly, and then it diffuses, becomes part of, until the cycle of change begins again. The light changes, and then the light itself is changed by its growing reflection against more and more of the world, until night comes, and it must wait for someone to be able to see it again.
These mornings, I was in the presence of subversiveness and yet, because I was just observing, I had the chance to understand all of those other times when this light came to call unexpectedly. I now know that I am shown the presence of that most subversive of all lights, the numinous as some of us might label it, without seeing, because my awareness began to form while the sky was still dark. I knew its presence first by my physical response and then by an indescribable sense of awe, the kind of awe that forces you to pay attention no matter what, the kind of awe that simultaneously holds your physical being captive to the moment and relaxes every muscle and every breath. Indeed, I did fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, just as the writer of that moving spiritual proclaims. And, with sunrises, like with all of life, that awe often comes in a moment when you expected nothing, when you surrender to the inescapable orange light of the morning even though you were sure that this would be the day when there was nothing to see or experience.
And so, even though the camera provides a poor replication of that which the eye and the soul can drink in, I offer you a little photo essay of some of the sights from why time away on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. There will be more to come later about the other work that I’ve done here, but for now, please, just spend a moment with the overwhelming inspiration of the sights from my dining room table.
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