Poem December 23, 2019 Issue

I’m beginning to see the light

Lona Ingwerson

The wakeful shepherd beholds the first faint morning beams, ere cometh the full radiance of a risen day.
—Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. vii

The key to seeing that radiance?
Maybe it’s to be a shepherd.
Not everyone noted those beams.
The shepherds did.
Not everyone paid attention to them.
The shepherds did.
Not everyone saw the risen day.
The shepherds did.
“Silly thought,” you might say.
“There’s no big call for shepherds in my town.”
A “shepherd,” in this context,
is someone who is really watching over the flock,
“the flock” being all within one’s thought range.
It’s watching what we take in on the news,
from the neighbors,
from what we see, and hear, and feel.
It’s being watchful of our thinking, our words, our actions.
It’s recognizing that Christ light
when others are seeing a dark sky.
It’s seeing what spiritually is.
Maybe that’s what it means to be a wise man,
like those who saw the star,
who refused to focus on anything else,
who couldn’t be deterred.