Happy Mother’s Day…
After sharing photos from my dad’s 88th birthday party last week, one friend wrote me a very kind email.
“Sue, did you know that you and your mom both have a physical glow about you that comes from the inside?” she wrote. “I’ve begun to notice that in a very few people I meet. I’m sure it’s Christ’s light and love. It’s a beautiful thing. Very special.”
I texted her back a picture that lives in a photo collage on our wall, a picture of my mom’s mom meeting our youngest daughter a few months before my grandma went to heaven at age 95. Seems to me that my mom’s mom exuded the same physical glow, the radiant light and love of the living Christ.
Richard Rohr writes about God’s shining glow in Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life.
“Most of us tend to think of the second half of life as largely getting old, dealing with health issues, and letting go of our physical life, but the whole thesis of this book is exactly the opposite,” explains Rohr. “What looks like falling can largely be experienced as falling upward and onward, into a broader and deeper world, where the soul has found its fullness, is finally connected to the whole, and lives inside the Big Picture.”
“It’s not a loss but somehow a gain, not losing but actually winning,” Rohr continues. “You probably have met at least one true elder to imagine this to be true. I have met enough radiant people in my life to know that it is fairly common. They have come to their human fullness, often against all odds, and usually by suffering personally or vicariously. As Jesus describes such a person, ‘from their breasts flow fountains of living water’ (John 7:38). These are the models and goals for our humanity, much more than the celebrities and politicos whom we care so much about today.” (153-154)
My mom and her mom both aged into being radiant people. On this Mother’s Day, I am incredibly grateful for their bright, shining model of falling upward and onward into the fullness of God, flowing fountains of living water for our thirsty world.
We too are designed to age into the radiance of God. You are to live clean, innocent lives as children of God in a dark world full of people who are crooked and stubborn. Shine out among them like beacon lights, holding out to them the Word of Life (Philippians 2:15b-16a, TLB).
…Sue…
