Brightness

“The difference between darkness and brightness is how you thrive on those moments and how you use such circumstances with goodwill in your spirit.”

(Angelica Hopes)

There is beautiful Gaelic feminine given name, Sorcha, derived from an old Irish word for brightness.

As dusk fell, this small patch in the woods held a luminous glow. A trick of the light? Or maybe, or something more intrinsic, held within the leaves and branches themselves to mark the passage of wanderers in the darkness. The shimmering spirit of Sorcha, helping us find our way.

We have celebrated the powerful masculine energy of brilliance for some time now. A sharp, focussed, individual shininess that competitively cuts its way through the gloom and fiercely spotlights the path. There is benefit in that kind of clarity. Yet all around it is eclipsed; falling away into deeper darkness. Our eyes struggle with contrast and difference; we find ourselves isolated, blinded and lost in the glare.

I wonder if this is the moment when the patriarchal structures of power and influence that have shaped our world since the renaissance are fading, subsumed by their own shadows, and now is the moment for a softer, more feminine enlightenment. How might we find supportive collaboration and cooperation as we bring our collective imagination, intuition, senses and deeper, participative knowing to the new forms of relationship and organisation that lie at the edges of our vision?

We will need to find the spirit of Sorcha as we bring ourselves to this work; opening to release our inner glow and letting it gently glimmer into the soft, vulnerable fragile spaces of discernment and insight.

There is no doubt that we face difficult times and turmoil in the days ahead.

But our brightness will light the path for others, and together we will find our way.

Notes:

I’m indebted to Murray and Sorcha, for unknowingly helping me find brightness, and to Bruce for pointing the way into this writing.

You will find Marianne Williamson’s poem ‘Our Deepest Fear’ (commonly misattributed to Nelson Mandela) in her book ‘A Return to Love'.’ The poem begins:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.”

And Stefan Harding invites us to encounter the deeply sensual, feminine, spiritual Gaia, in a re-enchanted anima mundi or ‘world soul’ through his book ‘Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia.’ As he helps us find find our place in Gaia, invoking Thomas Berry’s ‘a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects,’ we reframe our relationship to self, others and the world in ways that complement our rationality and provide a fuller, richer experience of an intelligent, living nature.