This Friday: Would You Like Help Naming Your Light?

5/11/21

Dear friend,

This week I'm breaking from our series on living into discerned invitations to talk about light—specifically, your light.

What difference would knowing your light make to you?

What comes to mind when you consider this?

Do you know what your light is, or how you'd describe it?

Would you find it valuable to spend a bit of focused time exploring it?

When I think about my heart for helping people notice and name their light, I think about the image of a young girl who visited me in my imagination last year.

She and I, both of us eight or nine years old, are standing on the blacktop of my elementary school playground, and I notice that to my nine-year-old self, her whole being—thick red hair, freckles on fair skin, amber-colored eyes, pink striped T-shirt with the hint of a chocolate ice cream stain, dark pink corduroy shorts—is endlessly interesting to me.

She's withdrawn, though. Shy. Unaware of all the beauty held inside her tiny body.

I feel I know her, and I feel I don't know her.

I want to know her.

What lights her up? What delights her? What curiously amazing gifts does she carry inside her already?

What matters to her? What breaks her heart? What does she wish for her life, even at that young age?

It's complex, isn't it? No one conversation could illuminate the totality of this beautiful person in front of me. Even by that age in life, so many colored gems rise and fall with each turn of the kaleidoscope of her life.

But it matters. All of it does.

And when we're adults, it matters still.

What are the gems of our life? What colors are they? How do they twist and turn and rise and fall together, mixing and matching and creating whole new worlds with each turn? What shapes get made? How brilliantly do they shine? What polishing might they need for greater luster?

Do we even know they're there?

I want you to know your light—in all its colors and shapes—is there.

I want you to know it can be more than one thing.

I want you to know it matters and is beautiful.

I want you to know it can take a while to know or name it.

And I want you to be given the space to notice its presence, to start or continue a conversation with it, to listen to what it has to say, to start to know it and name it.

I want you to be given the space to notice its presence, to make conversation with it, to listen to it, to name it.

I want you to have the chance to consider what difference it could make, going forward, to know what it is.

I'm hosting a contemplative retreat day this Friday, May 14, that's all about this.

My programming partner at the Light House, Becky Grisell, and I have prepared a day that takes you deeper into the exploration of your light in gentle, fun, creative ways.

It's a day designed to care for you and your light. It's a day designed to surface it even more.

Would you join us?

Learn more and register to join us here.

With you in your contemplative light,
Christianne