Editorial February 8, 1982 Issue

The light, the flight

NATHAN A. TALBOT

We had worked so late into the evening. Scattered papers across the table told of Dad's patient efforts to convey some basic trigonometry concepts. And then, suddenly, I saw them. A certain kind of illumination took place and everything fitted together. The problem, and its solution, came clearly into focus. The confusion, the uncertainty and frustration, seemed literally to rush away.

You've probably experienced similar enlightenment. In an instant the location of a misplaced item came to mind; or the route out of some difficult circumstance emerged brightly in thought. In a way, such inspirations hint at a deeply spiritual event that takes place in consciousness when, in the midst of a staggering problem, the light of the Christ, revealing man's true relationship to God, suddenly dawns and the trouble vanishes.

There may be patches of life when existence appears to be more an experience of darkness than of spiritual illumination. Yet we shouldn't settle into the belief that our path in outgrowing mortality must be strewn with the wreckage of hopeless struggles. It is true that all of us must undergo a full redemption, a complete transformation from materiality to spirituality. We are called on to sacrifice whatever is ungodlike, to wrestle free from illness and immorality.

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