Growing In Light and Darkness

It really is surprising how a little bit of sun today and some letting go of things I cannot control left me feeling good. I got outside for awhile, but also got the lights up and the seeds in the box in the sun room. The transition from outside gardening to inside garden is almost complete.

With the lights in the sun room on a timer the plants in the box can get 12 hours of light each day with our without sun. As the plants need light to grow, so I need light to feel good. Perhaps I should install more light in my office so that even on a cloudy day I can look up in light.

Darkness is part of life we must endure. But we all need the light to live fully. We stumble in the darkness and walk tall in the light. Plants grow in the darkness but need light to grow. This play between light and darkness is a paradox we need to live with just as nature does.

Another paradox of life is that the deeper we go down into life the more we grow up in life, just like the plant’s roots go down into the ground as the plant grows up toward the sky.

We are planning a nonviolent sit-down at Marquette so the school will stand up for conscience. We are trying to dismantle the military bases that now are hosted at Marquette University, which teach values that deny the primacy of conscience. By sitting down in the lobby of the library we hope that Marquette will stand up for conscience. This is a paradox of hope for the future.

The military students from 14 colleges that attend the military officer training program at Marquette are trained to “kill reflexively,” without conscience. As CPT Pete Kilner, Instructor in the U.S. Military Academy says: “The problem, however, is that soldiers who kill reflexively in combat will likely one day reconsider their actions reflectively.” (Paper presented to The Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics, Washington, DC, January 27-28, 2000, Updated as of 2/28/00) This paradox of reflex turning to reflection is one of despair.

Living in the present we find paradoxes of life: some are natural like light and darkness, some are of hope, like down and up, and some are of despair, like reflexive killing and reflective conscience.

Comments

(:commentboxchrono:)