Dear Friends ~ Rainbows may seem a rather glib focus for a March newsletter, but stick with me. Overplayed as they are in early Spring, I have the compounding factor of rainbow-enthusiast housemates; children pushing me to the next level of septacolored semicircles, selecting every story rendering a rainbow. As my spiritual directors, my children implore me to read and reread favorite picture books ad nauseum; a Lectio Devina of a bedtime reading ritual.
In truth, and not at all disingenuously, I find a deep well in children's literature. And rainbows, as both a physical phenomenon and illustrative image, offer seemingly endless edification, reaching back into our ancient stories and traditions around the globe and ahead into our scientific understanding of how we perceive our world on a narrow spectrum of visible light, with much to see beyond our means.
And so, drawing from the authors that write hope and aspiration into the lives of my children, alongside sonneteers and seekers of spirit and science whose words have made their way to me this waning winter, may we take a moment to hold these simple images and ideas with the same care and respect as the complex realities that often occupy our minds. May we all find something so trite and so radiant on which to ruminate, from which to luminate. ~ Katie
A secret sympathy unites a great community. They recognize one another by a sign, by a look, by the magnetic atmosphere that each one emanates; by their silences more than by their words. Like the children of Light, they have the desire to know and to understand, to love and to believe. The countenances of the greatest among them are veiled by a strange melancholy; for the tragedy of the universe weighs heavily upon their hearts. They feel themselves responsible for it, as portions of the earthly providence that watches over human destiny. But through this veil there shines like an aureole of light the inward joy of those who behold Divinity. In the silence they are conscious of being united to all living creatures by an invisible thread.