Shadows

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. KJV

“We are about to go into a dark winter.” Joe Biden

I do not really like Caverns or caves which is surprising since I have visited Crystal Grottoes, Carlsbad Caverns, Mammoth Cave, Indian Echo Caverns, Luray Caverns, and Smoke Hole Caverns. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the beauty, I do. As a former Science teacher, I respect the chemical processes involved in the creation of stalagmites and stalactites. I just do not enjoy being under ground in a confined space—claustrophobic. I would not make a very good coal miner as evidenced by my squeamishness during a tour of the Beckley Coal Mine in Beckley, WV.

A defining moment during a visit to the Crystal Grottoes is when the guide turns off all the lights. Since I did not want to “see” the darkness, I closed my eyes. Eventually, I did open them and was enveloped in complete and utter darkness—a darkness that could be felt.

Darkness … the absence of light … or is it really?

Was I really experiencing darkness? Is there such a thing? Why do we believe in the contrasting ideals of light and dark? Is darkness really the absence of light or is light the absence of darkness?

Maybe another way to view the absence of light I experienced in the cave was as a shadow. The sun’s light simply could not penetrate the crust of the earth and therefore what I experienced as darkness was really the shadow of the earth.

Could it be that all the beliefs and conditionings we tend to imagine we are, when seen in the Light, cast shadows of judgement, anxiety, fear, and all manner of unbelief and mistrust?

When I was growing up, one game we use to play as kids was Shadow Tag. Instead of tagging each other, the one who was ‘It’ tags your shadow by stepping on it. Nobody that I played the game with ever thought to stand in the shadow of a tree or building so as not to be tagged. Where is the fun in that?

Or perhaps you have made shadow puppets with your hands. Using a flashlight as your backdrop, you form your hand or hands into varying configurations—dog, cat, bird—the shadow of which is cast on some sort of canvas be it a wall or sheet. These examples seem to suggest that as children, we inherently know there is nothing to fear with shadows.

Curious about shadows, I did a little research and found the following. “The main reason why (a) flame has no shadow is because the flame itself is a source of light. A shadow is the surface area which is less bright than its surroundings because something is blocking light partially or fully from that area. Therefore, a shadow is nothing but a darker area with the absence of light”. (beingindian.com)

One of the first Bible passages I memorized as a child was the King James Version of the 23rd Psalm. Notice how David does not say the valley of death, but the valley of the shadow of death. Other translations use darkest valley or death-dark ravine.

The valley of the shadow of death …

Truth and illusion, love and fear, light and dark, life and death, health and sickness, each denies the other, yet only one is real… Remembering here that only what is of the Source of everything – God, Goddess, Truth, Love – whatever term we might use to point towards what cannot be named as something apart or other, is actually and truly real…

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” Exodus 3:14 … spoken from a burning bush, a flame, which cannot cast a shadow.

All seeming else is what we who are also Goddess’s child have made up… Making and Creation being totally different orders altogether… One real, the other not.. All belief, all shadow, all that is made up comes and goes, but what is real never comes, never goes, always is…

I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. Revelation 1:8 … who spoke, and there was Light.

Our collective (made up) beliefs in separation, (which all belief ultimately is) is what is casting all these shadowy illusions of fear, death, sickness, separation, greed, scarcity, power-over, ‘them’ and ‘us,’ and all the rest of this believed-in divisiveness we are calling the world…

Altogether it is a great shadow we have collectively cast (projected) through all our conflicted and conflicting beliefs upon creation, earth, nature, the universe, existence… Yet none of this shadowy world can ever actually be real because what casts shadows cannot ever be real… Nothing in Truth can cast a shadow upon what is Everything…

Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17

All these beliefs are arising from one simple mistaken belief we all of us humans continue to mostly unconsciously agree upon, no matter how far apart all our other beliefs may seem to be, the meta belief that we could be separate from what is the Source of everything, and therefor separate from and independent of each other, life, earth, existence…

And yet all this belief, without exception, when brought into the Light of consciousness is, by the very nature of what is Everything, transformed, transfigured even, now become able to serve, reflect and reveal creation in all of the Ways Goddess intended it to be, and it never was not… JF

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers, neither what exists nor what is coming, neither powers above nor powers below, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which comes to us through the Messiah Yeshua, our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

… that which separates us is only a shadow.

I am working on a project as a Christmas gift for my sons. I asked them to send me questions they would like me to answer about myself, my life, and my childhood. Among the four that my oldest son asked was this: What would you say about you if you were speaking at your funeral?

In part, here is my answer …

She was a life-long learner. Although she did a lot of reading on a wide variety of topics—philosophy, theology, history, science, psychology—most of her learning came, for good or bad, through making mistakes. She spent a lifetime learning that she was a bra-burning feminist, a conservative-liberal Democrat, a typical Myers-Briggs INFJ personality type, and quintessential Taurus.

While all of that mattered to her, at the same time none of it mattered to her unless she held those labels and beliefs in the Light of the Holy Spirit to see what shadows those beliefs cast. When she did so, God’s unfathomable Love enveloped her in the Light of Truth, Beauty and Love. In the end, that made all the difference.